I'm a Redsox fan, by breeding and by choice. Which means that every year I end up reading yet another series of arguments that Jim Rice does, or does not, belong in the Hall of Fame.
The earliest team that I recall for certain is the 1977 team, and the home run binge. When I began attending baseball card shows, I discovered that I already had some from 1977, and a very few from earlier years.
Which is to say that I first really started paying attention to baseball when Rice was at his peak. This no doubt distorts my perspective to some degree. Nevertheless, I think I can be objective in assessing Rice's credentials.
Rice had a relatively short career. His name does not figure prominently on any of the career leader boards - 45th in career homeruns. The argument for Rice is based on his peak seasons, rather than his career accomplishments.
Rice, at his peak, was regarded as being an outstanding ballplayer. One measure of this is how well he did in MVP voting. Rice won the 1978 MVP award, and was among the top five five additional years. If you examine his MVP award shares, you find that he's in pretty good company:
3.33 Eddie Murray 3.33 Rogers Hornsby 3.30 George Brett 3.30 Willie Stargell 3.28 Reggie Jackson 3.25 Harmon Killebrew 3.20 Ken Griffey Jr. 3.19 Dave Parker 3.17 Mike Piazza 3.16 Alex Rodriguez 3.14 Jim Rice 3.04 Joe Morgan 2.93 Al Kaline 2.90 Jeff Bagwell 2.88 Paul Waner 2.83 Ernie Banks 2.82 Carl Hubbell 2.81 Roberto Clemente 2.80 Dizzy Dean 2.77 Johnny Bench
Rice ranks 29th overall. Of course, that 29th is somewhat deceiving - Rice was never more highly regarded than Ruth, or Cobb; but both of those legends place lower on the list because this measure isn't particularly effective until 1933 or so.
Consider the career length of the players in this list. We'll eliminate the active players and the pitchers.
3026 Eddie Murray 2834 Al Kaline 2820 Reggie Jackson 2707 George Brett 2649 Joe Morgan 2549 Paul Waner 2528 Ernie Banks 2466 Dave Parker 2435 Harmon Killebrew 2433 Roberto Clemente 2360 Willie Stargell 2259 Rogers Hornsby 2158 Johnny Bench 2089 Jim Rice
Rice doesn't look like he belongs in the group. Bench has the excuse of 1700+ games behind the plate, Hornsby is just a lot better (he would certainly place much higher on this list were the MVP awarded throughout his career). There's a fairly big gap here.
Another way to assess peak is to compare the performance of the players during their best years. Dale J. Stephenson regularly publishes peak lists, which describe where the value of a players career falls. I'll use a fairly recent Hall of Fame list as a source here; go see the original for a description of the methods.
So lets look at that list again, using Stephenson's peak metric.
Name Peak Decade Outside Years Rogers Hornsby 41.5 20s 46.4 14.9 Joe Morgan 33.6 70s 30.3 16.6 Willie Stargell 28.8 70s 26.6 14.7 Reggie Jackson 28.4 70s 26.2 17.7 Roberto Clemente 24.3 60s 17.9 15.3 Eddie Murray 24.2 80s 25.3 19.3 Al Kaline 23.2 60s 30.5 16.3 Paul Waner 22.5 30s 23.5 16.6 Ernie Banks 21.2 50s 5.4 16.0 Dave Parker 21.0 70s 4.7 15.4 Jim Rice 19.2 70s 9.8 13.2 Johnny Bench 18.7 70s 10.2 13.5
Wow, what happened? Rice and Parker have gone from the middle of the list to being trapped at the bottom between a catcher and a shortstop. In effect, these numbers are suggesting that - in addition to having a short career for a player of Rice's perceived peak - his actual peak was lower than it looked.
There's some comfort in this (if Rice wasn't as good as we thought, it helps explain why he didn't last as long as we expected). But why does perception differ so from measured performance?
Consider, for example, Rice's 1978 MVP campaign. By the time the dust had settled, Rice domiantes the leaderboards: SLG%, OPS, Games, AB, Hits, Total Bases (406!), 3B (5 more than the runner up), HR (12! more than the runner up), RBI, XBH, TOB.
Do you see it?
What business does the top slugger in the game have leading the league in at bats? Not just leading the league, mind, but putting in an entry on the single season leaderboard (#34)?
Of the players on the AB leaderboard, Rice is the top slugger, about 25 points ahead of Don Mattingly's 1986 campaign. At the time, Tony Oliva (.556) and Al Simmons (.547) were the big sluggers on the list.
If you look at the total bases list, the answer is much the same. The typical player on this list has 392 bases, acheived by slugging .654 in 599 at bats. Rice slugs only .600, but gets 78 extra at bats to make up the difference.
What about Runs Created?
TB Outs RC 409 395 187 Rogers Hornsby 1929 409 374 189 Lou Gehrig 1934 406 408 167 Joe Medwick 1937 406 490 149 Jim Rice 1978 405 406 165 Chuck Klein 1929 405 421 153 Hal Trosky 1936 403 381 190 Lou Gehrig 1936 403 371 180 Jimmy Foxx 1933 400 434 161 Henry Aaron 1959
Same problem, different perspective - Rice is using up more outs than everybody else, just to catch up to the bottom of the list.
January 29, 2004 10:34 PM
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