Stone on Jim Rice’s Hall of Fame candidacy
DMZ · January 2, 2008 at 1:30 pm · Filed Under General baseball
You know here at USSM we’re fans of Larry Stone (”Official Seattle Sports Writer of USS Mariner”) so I want to point you to his piece with Phil Rogers on ESPN about Rice.
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Great back and forth there. The story of his rescue of the kid who got hit with the foul ball is an awesome recollection for us in these days of daily steroid headlines. I’d like to see him in, personally.
He needs to be in the HOF, Jim Rice is just one of those players that made baseball fun to watch during those years where players seemed to be on the boring side.
Great read. I was a big fan of the Red Sox outfield when I was a little kid, Rice, Lynn and Evans. I have always believed that Rice belonged, but Larry proved it. In 1983 I became a Braves fan, and more important a Dale Murphy fan. I know his case isn’t as strong, but as a fan I hope he gets in. I really hope that writers will take a look at the late 70’s and early 80’s and consider more players from that era.
Phil Rogers starts out with the best argument against admitting Jim Rice to the HOF – Rice just wasn’t excellent for a sufficient number of years – then gets talked out of it. Too bad.
You know your case is weak when you start quoting Hawk Harrelson. I’m not 100% convinced Rice is a Hall of Famer, but Stone totally obliterated Rogers…
Does anyone remember the old episode of “The Baseball Bunch” with Johnny Bench, the one that had Ted Williams’ explaining his strike zone model and Jim Rice talking about hitting and bat selection? Johnny Bench selects two guys to talk to kids about hitting, Ted Williams and Jim Rice. Just an anecdote about the kind of company his talent put him in back in his prime. I wore out all those shows on VHS tapes, by the way. I came for the SD Chicken, but stayed for Jim Rice and Ozzie Smith!
I’ve been a Sox fan for my whole life, but I have to admit that Rice has always fallen just a bit short for me — he’s in that ‘great but not transcendent’ gap that separates the players you remember forever from the ones who have their great moments. Eddie Murray is another great example of that, for me — he’s in the hall, but he always felt to me like he should’ve fallen just short, and Murray definitely had a better HOF case than Rice.
I’m still not convinced that Rice should get his Cooperstown ticket punched, but good Lord did Phil Rogers botch that one.
Citing 80 postseason plate appearances and that he “walked away”? Stone sure made him look like the Washington Generals in this piece.
Do people realize that Rice was a .277/.330/.459 hitter away from offense-friendly Fenway Park?
Rice has was considered a top-tier player–had lots of RBI’s but was average at best on defense. So I think he is ‘just a bit short’. . . .
This is an early look at some numbers
games #1 2089
#2 2055
hits #1 2452
#2 2247
Ave/ob/slug
#1 298/352/502
#2 312/418/515
rbi #1 1451
#2 1261
Take choice. ..
#1
Jim Rice
#2
E. Martinez
Let’s keep that spot open for Edgar–Rice is marginal at best!
OldDuck
I like Larry, but I can’t support Rice for the HoF. I’m not a big fan of these “debate” articles at ESPN, and this one makes Larry look like a Jayson Stark wannabe with all the random numbers and trivia he uses in his arguments.
He definitely wrote circles around Rogers though…
Player A:
.370 OBP, .840 OPS, 8 Golden Gloves in RF
Jim Rice:
.352 , .854 OPS, no Golden Gloves in LF
They’re talking about the wrong Red Sox OF’er to put in the Hall of Fame, in my opinion. Dwight Evans should be the one going in the Hall of Fame first, not Jim Rice. And they aren’t even so far apart on counting stats like HR and RBI.
The difference (in the eyes of HOF voters) is that Rice had a couple of flashier seasons with RBI/HR totals, but the reality is Evans was perceived as the superior player in the field and probably was the superior player (absent advanced statistics, eyewitness evaluations are what we have to go with), was CLEARLY the better player on the basepaths (Jim Rice had awful GIDP stats), and was also the better offensive player (better OBP, nearly the same SLG).
That, in my opinion, is why Jim Rice fails my HOF test- his stats are considerably less impressive when examined next to a teammate, and his defense and baserunning also drag him down. He’s in the Frank Howard/Jay Buhner/Albert Belle class of “almost, but not quite” sluggers for me.
For what it is worth, from baseball-reference on Jim Rice’s chances for HOF:
Black Ink: Batting – 33 (49) (Average HOFer ≈ 27)
Gray Ink: Batting – 176 (57) (Average HOFer ≈ 144)
HOF Standards: Batting – 43.0 (113) (Average HOFer ≈ 50)
HOF Monitor: Batting – 146.5 (85) (Likely HOFer > 100)
Overall Rank in parentheses.
At a quick glance, that makes it look like he is qualified.
No, it means he falls into the class of players that get awarded with trips to Cooperstown because of how certain statistics are evaluated by HOF voters. You might note that Dwight Evans is fairly obviously the superior player in a comparison between him and Jim Rice, but he has lower “chances” for the HOF:
Black Ink: Batting – 15 (149) (Average HOFer ≈ 27)
Gray Ink: Batting – 113 (179) (Average HOFer ≈ 144)
HOF Standards: Batting – 43.4 (111) (Average HOFer ≈ 50)
HOF Monitor: Batting – 70.0 (257) (Likely HOFer > 100)
There are some pretty serious problems with how the Hall of Fame voters have evaluated candidates in the past, esepcially the Veterans Committee that Bill James went into in The Politics of Glory. The fact that they aren’t letting Jim Rice in yet is a GOOD thing, in my opinion, because I’m not convinced he deserves a trip before some other comparable players.
The HoF is, except as an nice idea, now the barely stinking, dessicated corpse of a horse that was clearly flogged long. long, long after death. I actually think that at this point the remaining bad smell is du to sportwriters visiting the site annually to piss on fans’ reasonably love of the history of the Game.
At this time that the very idea of rational debate over who “belongs” there, meaning what the HoF really now IS, is an argument as pointless and immature as minors debating the quality of Coors vs. Budweiser.
Now, don’t get me wrong here – if a player I remember and admired gets in, I’m happy. I have no interest at all in the reasons those cursed with a vote happen to have gotten it, by my sites, “right”.
Peace.
Please insert –> e
Do people realize that Rice was a .277/.330/.459 hitter away from offense-friendly Fenway Park?
Last year, in the AL, teams hit:
.274/.344/.432 – home
.266/.332/.414 – away
Looking over the last 3-4 years, there seems to be a pretty consistent home/road split on offense. So just looking at Rice’s away hitting stats isn’t especially insightful unless we also conjure up the league average away hitting line from those days. Park effects matter, but it’s better to do a park adjustment than to look strictly at a player’s away hitting line.
During his early peak (’77 to ‘79), Rice finished 4th, 1st, and 2nd in MLB-wide VORP (which is park-adjusted) while finishing 4th, 1st, and 5th in the AL MVP voting. I don’t think he should be in the HOF because his peak wasn’t so great that the merits of his peak outweigh his shortcomings in career length, but I do think he was a better hitter than his away split suggests.
It’s appalling that Rice will probably be inducted this year, but Tim Raines will not.
Oh, and I think you could make a case that from 1975-1980, during the peak of his career, Jim Rice was the 3rd best OF on his own team, because Dwight Evans AND Fred Lynn were superior players… and neither Evans nor Lynn are viewed as HOF’ers. So why are HOF voters plugging Rice again? Because he had a handful of seasons with very high RBI and HR totals, which are flashy- while ignoring the walks and defense than Lynn and Evans provided and the large numbers of double plays Rice grounded into.
So, basically, that’s the counter to Stone’s argument: you have to overvalue HR/RBI totals and undervalue walks and defense to think Rice is superior to his teammates. If you don’t, realistically, Lynn and Evans (among others- just to toss out some names, consider Dale Murphy, Pedro Guerrero, Brian Downing, Don Baylor, Darrell Evans and Jack Clark) block the door.
+ He needs to be in the HOF, Jim Rice is just one of those players that made baseball fun to watch during those years where players seemed to be on the boring side. +
Which is exactly my argument for Rick Dempsey….
“Fun to watch” just isn’t a HOF-criterion worth much weight IMHO
As a note, I wouldn’t put Rice behind ALL those players I mentioned… but as a group, you could make arguments for each of them, and Rice isn’t dramatically, head and shoulders OVER them like, say Reggie, Eddie Murray, George Brett, or Robin Yount as a clearly superior player (as exemplars of the really superior position players of Rice’s generation).
“Fun to watch” just isn’t a HOF-criterion worth much weight IMHO
As much weight as anything else at this point I’d think. Some people use OPS+, some homeruns, some batting average, some VORP and some Win Shares. Seems to me that the point of baseball being entertainment, and something we love someone who uses “fun to watch” might have as good a point as the next fella.
I don’t have an opinion on Rice really. I was too young to really watch him play (especially living in Seattle and mostly paying attention the AL West). Going over his stats he looks like a borderline (well, for the HoF that is) player, deserving of at least a good healthy arguement. If he’s not voted, oh well. If he is, well than maybe Boston fans would finally STFU about it. =)
No, but my friend, who was in that episode, as part of the Baseball Bunch, probably does….
I don’t think Rice is anywhere close to being a HOFer, as was pointed out he was inferior to Dwight Evans and Fred Lynn. Plus Albert Belle > Rice, and Belle isn’t a HOFer either.
To me, Jim Rice is a problem case, in that he’s a great player who’s essentially being punished for not hanging around another two or three seasons at a lower level of performance to pad his counting stats. If he’d hung around until 1992 with a couple of punchless .265 seasons and racked up another 350 hits and pushed over 400 career HRs, I suspect people would find it easier to elect Rice as a great player — for logging more poor-player time than he did. Kind of ironic.
So, Dave and DMZ … where do you stand in regard to Rice?
And if you were voting, who would be on your ballot?
For me, it’s Blyleven, Raines, Trammell and Gossage.
No, #25. Jim Rice was NOT a great player. Look, I’m a Red Sox fan. I started watching the Sox in 1977. I saw most of his career. He was a very good player but Fenway *made* him. Fenway typically plays around a 104 run index now, pumping up scoring about 4%.
Back in the late 70’s, Fenway was anywhere from a 110 to a 120 run index. And back then, Fenway was an excellent park for homers by righties. Since the extra sections were added on to the physical structure behind home plate, the push from prevailing winds from the west-southwest has greatly diminished. Fenway’s now a below average park for homers by righties and greatly diminishes homers by lefties.
Here are Jim Rice’s home and road splits for his career, not just one season but his career:
.320/.374/.546 .920 OPS at home
.277/.330/.459 .784 OPS on the road
Is that road performance anyone’s conception of a hall of fame worthy left fielder who brings no particular speed or defensive value to the table?
He was a good hitter but he had more baserunners than there were people at Woodstock on base for him in the early 80’s when Boggs and Evans batted in front of him. He rang up some very soft 100 rbi totals.
coincidently, this morning Seth Everett went off on an extended rant on who makes up the HOF voters, and their unwillingness to allow in the electronic or on-air media.
Huh. That’s not an unreasonable basis for a rant.
Hm. In principle, would blog sites be unqualified to be voters?
I thought I read that most of the ESPN senior writers are allowed to vote with the notable exception of Neyer.
All writers with 10 years of membership in the BBWAA are eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame, as are the living members of the Hall, the living recipients of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award and the living recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award.
#31– according to the wiki on the BBWAA, they voted to open its membership to Web-based writers employed on a full-time basis by “websites that are credentialed by MLB for post-season coverage.” There is also a discussion of why Law & Neyer aren’t among them…
#30– one of Everett’s complaints was that people like Suzyn Waldman, Ed Randall, & Dave Neihaus (thats, what, about 100 years of covering baseball?) have no vote, where some one who joins the BBWAA while tangentially covering a team can have a vote after a decade.
Dave Niehaus is an employee of the Seattle Mariners. He’s not a baseball writer.
How can some one argue the case for Jim Rice and not Albert Belle…Belle was the superior player, but you aren’t going to see a similar “email debate”. Jim Rice gets press because of where he played his entire career. If he was in Seattle and not Boston this would all be moot.
I’m also not sure why I’m supposed to give him that much credit for being #1 in games and at bats. If he was #1 in those stats he better have been high up on the other counting stats. Im assuming that in 10 years that we won’t be saying one of the reasons Ichiro or Michael Young deserve to be in the Hall of Fame is because they had 650 ABs per year..
msb – The good news is, Jim Street is on that list!
All Neyer has to do is answer really dumb questions for some team’s mailbag, and he’ll get his membership card!
Speaking of Street’s mailbag, his latest one has some great stuff! Does he purposely pick questions that he can answer in a way to make the person asking it feel stupid?
neither is Waldman, and most of the time, neither is Randall. that wasn’t the point Everett was trying to make mid-rant.
James T,
Just curious…would you make the same argument if the name were David Ortiz instead of Rice? I know his numbers are better in some important ways and he’s a champion, but he’s even more worthless defensively and owes as much to hitting in Fenway as anyone, right? Just for reference, is Ortiz a HOFer in your mind?
I just don’t see how someone who writes for a newspaper is any more qualified to determine who goes to the Hall of Fame, than someone who writes for a website.
In fact, I don’t know the numbers, but I bet a very high percentage of paper writers these days also participate online in some form. Most of them have blogs on their paper’s website, and many contribute to ESPN and other media outlets.
Furthermore, with today’s advances in technology, how is not going to enough games a reason not to allow someone in? You can see tons more watching on television, and pitch f/x is going to give you a lot more information than watching a pitch from the 7th row on the third base side.
38 – There are not dramatic differences in Ortiz’s home/road splits like there are for Rice. Ortiz got off to a late start and needs to sustain his production through his late 30’s for HOF consideration in my opinion.
25 – Jim, errr, “Thom” wrote:
Without getting into the specific debate about whether Rice is or isn’t “a great player,” to me this is exactly the problem with proponents of longevity-based counting stat HoF litmus tests. Longevity matters, but only in the sense that a player shouldn’t be perceived as a “flash in the pan.” What matters to me is a sustained, excellent peak. The argument Stone laid out first – the idea that if you had asked a player’s peers at the time if he was HoF caliber, and the so-called “fear factor” for pitchers he faced – is as good a way to think of that subjectively as any.
On Ortiz – I’m with Jack. Even though I don’t believe in counting stat litmus tests (as I just said), it’s hard to see how Ortiz will garner much support when he stands at less than 1500 hits and 600 XBH (with only 266 HR). He’s now sitting on five years of sustained excellence (finishing no worse than 4th in MVP voting in any of those five seasons), but he was nothing special before that. If he maintains this peak for another couple of years, and then has 2-3 lesser years after that where he is still a better-tha-league-average player, he’ll deserve consideration, regardless of what his counting stats are or aren’t. Like Edgar, though, he’ll be hurt by having essentially no defensive value added….
How can some one argue the case for Jim Rice and not Albert Belle…
Regardless of statistics, Belle will never be in the HOF.
There are some players that have off the field problems that will prevent them from being in the Hall. I can think of some others, too.
43 – Which is another problem with the HOF all together. I don’t care how crappy of a person you are off the field, we aren’t considering these guys for the Humanitarion Hall of Fame.
Until Ty Cobb is pulled from the Hall of Fame (and, he shouldn’t be) this issue will always bother me.
Paul B.’s right about Belle, of course, but I’ll take up the Rice vs. Belle debate.
The biggest thing Belle has going against him is he only played 1539 MLB games – about 9.5 seasons, on a 162-gm basis. For about one and a half of those seasons, (his first two partial seasons, and his last), he was essentially just a little better than league average. You wouldn’t count that against him if he had a 15 or 20-year career, but when it is closer to a ten-year career, that matters.
Belle had a great, sustained 4-year peak, and you could persuasively argue that it was six or seven years (his 1992 season was pretty good too, and his “off” year between a his great 1993-1996 run and his terrific 1998 season was .274/.332/.491, with a 116 OPS+). That ’s a damn good 5-7 year run. The problem is, there isn’t much else – no slip from the level of “great” to “very good” to “good.”
I acknowledege that Jim Rice’s candidacy also has problems that have been well exposed and argued here, but he did play 15 seasons, and 550 more MLB games than Belle did. Like Belle, there were a couple “breaks” in his peak period where his performance slipped from “great” to just “very good” or even just “good” (i.e., Rice’s ‘76 and ‘81 seasons), but the peak was a lot longer than Belle’s – arguably 9-11 years. That difference means something.
[BTW, that's something that Edgar can say, too - his peak was sustained (with the exception of his injury-plagued '93 and '94 seasons) for essentially 10 years. IMO, apart from the very credible argument surrounding a guy like Belle's character and off-field issues, this is the main difference between guys like Rice or Edgar and a guy like Belle, for HoF purposes.]
To further prove Paul’s point about the media, take a look at the 1995 MVP voting where Mo Vaughn beat out Belle:
Vaughn 300/388/510
Belle 317/401/690
Counting Stats
Vaughn 28 doubles, 39 home runs, 126 RBI, 98 runs
Belle 52 doubles, 50 home runs, 126 RBI, 121 runs
To further prove Paul’s point about the media, take a look at the 1995 MVP voting where Mo Vaughn beat out Belle:
Vaughn 300/388/510
Belle 317/401/690
Counting Stats
Vaughn 28 doubles, 39 home runs, 126 RBI, 98 runs
Belle 52 doubles, 50 home runs, 126 RBI, 121 runs
Not only THAT, but Belle’s Indians went 100-44! Vaughn’s Red Sox won the AL East but were only 86-58.
Not that I advocate that part of the “Who is the MVP?”-argument, but given that Mo won with those stats you’d think the win totals would have been reversed.
Re #43
Belle’s peak destroys Rice’s peak, it was longer and more productive. Even belle’s not-spectacular 1999 is close to being as productive as some of Rice’s best seasons.
Belle’s peak destroys Rice’s peak, it was longer and more productive. Even belle’s not-spectacular 1999 is close to being as productive as some of Rice’s best seasons.
Different era. WAAAAAY different era. That’s pretty much Stone’s whole point. This sorta stands out to me about Albert Belle’s era:
“Buhner became tenth player (and first since Frank Howard 1968-1970) to hit 40 or more home runs in a season each of three consecutive seasons.”
It is hard to gauge the Rice era. Interesting to me that from the early to mid-sixties to the early eighties, you had a number of really fine African American major leaguers, many of them multipurpose outfielders, who shone at the time but whose numbers today don’t get anyone excited. It was an exciting time when black ballplayers really had a much stronger presence in MLB than today. I’m even thinking back to very productive people like Reggie Smith, my favorite Reggie of the period. Not a hall of famer, but imagine if he hadn’t played from the mid-sixties to the early eighties. 17 years of pitcher-friendly baseball and he’s not all that far behind Rice in several areas. Spent some time in humid, large Busch Stadium and in Dodger Stadium as well.
Smith 287/366/489, 314 HRs, 2020 hits, 1092 rbi, 7 allstar games, lotsa arm in rf
Rice 298/352/502, 350 HRs, 2452 hits, 1451 rbi
So many others.
Al Oliver 303/344/451 2743 hits, 219 HR, 1326 rbi in 18 seasons beginning in ‘68.
And Dave Parker and the list could go on.
Maybe Rice wasn’t the best outfielder on his own team. Smith wasn’t better than Yaz. Oliver wasn’t better than Clemente (or Dawson later). It was a great era though for productive, all-star calibre outfielders whose numbers today don’t look that superlative.
I acknowledege that Jim Rice’s candidacy also has problems that have been well exposed and argued here, but he did play 15 seasons, and 550 more MLB games than Belle did. Like Belle, there were a couple “breaks” in his peak period where his performance slipped from “great” to just “very good” or even just “good” (i.e., Rice’s ‘76 and ‘81 seasons), but the peak was a lot longer than Belle’s – arguably 9-11 years. That difference means something.
Yeah, but Belle’s peak was considerably higher. Rice’s top 3 OPS+’s were 157 (1978), 154 (1979), 147 (1977). Belle has 4 years in his career with his OPS+ above 157- 1994-1996 and 1998. Yes, Rice hung around for a couple and dragged his averages down, but it’s not hard to see who was the better hitter.
Rice also grounded into 24 DP’s a year per 162 games, and had a bad SB% (over 162 games, he’d average out to 4 for 7). Belle grounded into 20 DP’s, and would be 9 for 13 over 162 games as a base stealer.
Both were pretty negligible contributors defensively, so basically if you want to give Rice credit for longevity, it’s for hanging around after age 33 (when Belle retired)… and he was basically done as a player at that point (his OPS’s after age 33: 101, 102 and 70)…. or for starting his career a bit earlier. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk difference, anyway.
Different era. WAAAAAY different era. That’s pretty much Stone’s whole point. This sorta stands out to me about Albert Belle’s era:
Well, OPS+ is adjusted for league. Unless you want to go “steroid era, gotta throw it out”, at which point you pretty much kiss goodbye to most players in that era.
The problem for Jim Rice’s HOF case is, that like I said, I don’t even think Jim Rice is the best OF’er from the Red Sox who isn’t in the HOF, let alone the best candidate for the HOF who’s not in. I’d likely take Dwight Evans OR Reggie Smith ahead of him.
Yeah, Reggie Smith.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/smithre06.shtml
Rice had a SLG .095 above his league through his career (.502 to .407).
Smith had a SLG .102 above league (.489 to .387).
Smith’s raw OBP is better than Rice’s, and adjusted for league, it’s not very close (.034 above league to .015).
Smith grounded into less DPs, stole more bases at a better clip, and could play credible CF. (Bill Lee, who wasn’t Reggie Smith’s buddy, said Smith had the best OF arm he’d ever seen.)
Reggie Smith’s career is almost as long as Jim Rice’s, and he never had a season where he was a waste of at-bats like Rice did (well, maybe his 1981 season, but he only got 35 AB’s).
The reason why Rice is a HOF candidate and Smith is just viewed as a damn good ballplayer is Rice’s offense is seriously inflated in comparison, and MVP/HOF voters love HR’s and RBI and don’t often use defense and baserunning to evaluate players. Smith played in the late 60’s-early 70’s AL, just a TERRIBLE league for offense, and then went to St. Louis and then Dodger Stadium, another TERRIBLE place for offense.
Given that guys like Dale Murphy and Tim Raines are on the ballot… sorry, no, Jim Rice wouldn’t get my vote.
#46. I know that seems like an AHA!! or a gotcha that proves the media’s bias gainst Albert.
Only it doesn’t.
Albert produced something like 32 of those 50 homers from August 1 on, at which point the Indians already had a 12 game lead over a pathetically weak Brewers team (yes, from back when the Brewers were in the AL). Albert was no more valuable than 5 or 6 others on the tribe in the team getting out to that lead. He was, however, the most valuable in the lead going from 12 games up to 17 or 18 games up.
Would I have voted for Belle for player of the year? Absolutely. But it wasn’t crazy or tragically unfair to not vote him MVP when you take into account more of the context of that season.
Smb, #38.
I don’t think Ortiz is a hall of famer at this point and he probably only has an outside shot at getting there.
As to his owing as much to Fenway as anyone, that’s simply not true. Maybe you think Fenway’s a good home run park. It’s not, not any more. It typically has a HR index of something like 95 for homers by righties, meaning they’re reduced 5% compared to Sox road games. And the HR index is typically about 75-80 for lefties, meaning it reduces them 20-25% compared to Sox road games.
Fenway takes home runs away from Ortiz. Look at the last 4 seasons (I’m leaving out the 2003 season, his first with the Sox because Ortiz barely played the first 6 weeks, in the cold weather at Fenway, while Grady Little, genius old time baseball guy, was playing Shea Hillenbrand and Kevin Millar much more often. Fenway can be impossible to homer at in April)
2004, Ortiz hit 24 of 41 homers on the road.
2005, Ortiz hit 27 of 47 homers on the road.
2006, Ortiz hit 32 of 54 homers on the road.
2007, Ortiz hit 19 of 35 homers on the road.
Ortiz’s home-road splits have been neutral two of the last four years with a slight home bias in 2005 and a larger one last year that seemed to be mostly a difference in batting average.
2004-H .325/.397/.587–.984
—–A .274/.361/.621–.982
2005-H .322/.425/.603–1.028
—–A .278/.369/.605—.974
2006-H .300/.426/.618–1.044
—–A .275/.399/.653–1.052
2007-H .365/.471/.657–1.128
—–A .298/.420/.585–1.005
JI wrote:
More productive, possibly. Longer, not true. And it is the length of peak, more so than its height (unless waaaaay higher) that matters most in HoF voting, or should, IMO. Obviously both are very important, but like I said before it is the sustaining of a player’s peak – as long as you can still say the height of the peak shows excellence – that separates the HoFers from the near-great for me.
And E.C. wrote:
If we voting for an MVP year, season vs. season (or even 2-3 seasons in a row of Belle vs. Rice), you’d get no argument from me, even if Belle did play in a far more offensive (and now, suspect) era. But we’re not – we’re looking at a career, and the length of the peak becomes far more important in that context. As long as Rice was considered among the best in baseball during his era (and he was), I just wouldn’t put that much stock in the height of the peak as opposed to its length. Just my opinion; YMMV.
I agree, Reggie Smith has a pretty respectable case too. I think,once he retires, Jim Edmonds is one of those guys who the MSM won’t care about because of counting numbers, but will end up being championed by stat-heads.
If you’re interested, Rice falls far short in WPA:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/my-hall-of-fame-ballot/
As long as Rice was considered among the best in baseball during his era (and he was)
Same thing is true for Belle.
But we’re not – we’re looking at a career, and the length of the peak becomes far more important in that context.
Rice also has more seasons where he was simply a bad player, period, or just mediocre.
Take 1984, for instance: .280/28/122… but 36 double plays, and .272/.313/.428 out of Fenway (Fenway was the best hitters park in the AL that year, with a park factor better than Coors Field in 2007). THAT’s a HOF line?
I was NOT making the argument that Rice should be a Hall of Famer. I was arguing that his credentials (even apart from the off-field sh*t that will probably alone prevent Belle from ever getting serious consideration) are better than Belle’s. I think you (and a few others) have dented my confidence in that position, but I still stand by that, mostly because Rice was excellent longer than was Belle. I understand that both have serious flaws in their HoF credentials.
Studes:
That is a damn fine article. Seems on the money to me on every call you make, subjectively. Great work.
Again, if you look up the numbers you’re going to find that Belle’s peak (as I originally stated was longer (93-99, with 97 being a down year), if you want to count Rice’s “peak” as to going to 83, you’re going to have to concede there are 3-4 mediocre years mixed in that period as well as the best of his peak years being dwarfed by Belle’s best years.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/belleal01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/riceji01.shtml
#52. I know that seems like an AHA!! or a gotcha that proves the media’s bias gainst Albert.
Only it doesn’t.
I agree that it doesn’t prove a BWAA bias in itself. Belle had by far the superior year to Vaughn in 1995 and you seem to be punishing Belle’s MVP chances because the Indians were too good that season. I think that’s wrong.
Back to the media bias, there most certainly was a media bias toward Belle in 1995 which can be detected in Buster Olney’s comment from that time when defending his vote for Vaughn:
“At that time, baseball was in a very, very fragile state, having come off the strike year. I felt like the MVP was also who was most valuable to the game as a whole…I do think that’s probably a human element that determines what happens sometimes. There are certain guys you want to vote for.”
JI: I looked at the numbers, too. I said all along that Belle’s peak was (arguably) 7 years, giving him credit for the “down” year in ‘97 (which I think we both agree was less than HoF-caliber “great” but still a pretty good year). So, seven years, one “hole” for Belle. Not much else other than that, except a half a year of waaay less than league average performance at the beginning of his career, two that are good but not great (’92, ‘93), and one that is barely better than league average (his last).
Rice was an All Star and in the top five in MVP voting four out of his first six years. Yeah, he had a year like Belle’s ‘97 in ‘76, and another in ‘81 (though, again, “down” years here would be career years for the average player). He had another five-year stretch of great seasons (one arguably just “very good” in ‘84) after that.
I have no idea why you would think ‘83 is questionably included in Rice’s peak (he was 3rd in MVP voting that year) or stop counting Rice’s “peak” at ‘83. He won a Silver Slugger and was an AS (13th in MVP voting) in a year I have included as a “down” year (’84), was an AS again in ‘85 when he hit .291/.349/.487 with 103 RBIs and a 123 OPS+, and he was an AS and 3rd in MVP voting in ‘86, when he hit .324/.384/.490!
Ignoring the seasons that don’t measure up, Rice had 9 of those seasons, and Belle had five.
I’ll concede that Belle’s peak was higher, but I stand by the assertion that Rice’s was longer.
And just saying that OPS+ accounts for park and league doesn’t mean it adjusts properly for era. You have to consider the era each player played in. That certainly doesn’t favor Belle.
I have no idea why I am championing Jim Rice, for whom I probably wouldn’t even vote if I had a HoF vote, other than I disagree that he is somehow clearly inferior to Albert Belle, as you and some others have asserted. I think he is better, based on a longer period of pretty well-sustained excellence. As I said before, YMMV, especially if you value a higher peak over length of sustained excellence. At the very least, I don’t think a very credible argument can be made that a HoF vote for Belle would be more justified than one for Rice.
OPS+ does adjust for era, it adjusts park factors, and weighs the player’s OPS against the league average.
An OPS+ of 193 in 1994, is a good as an OPS+ of 193 in 1978. The one thing it does not adjust for is the handedness of the hitter, so an OPS+ of 120 at Safeco, for example, means something different for Raul Ibanez than it does for Mike Cameron. So if anything, because Fenway was so favorable for right handed batters, gives more wight to slugging %, and doesn’t factor in GIDP, it’s probably overrating Rice’s productivity.
#46 wrote:
Albert produced something like 32 of those 50 homers from August 1 on, at which point the Indians already had a 12 game lead. Albert was no more valuable than 5 or 6 others on the tribe in the team getting out to that lead. He was, however, the most valuable in the lead going from 12 games up to 17 or 18 games up.
But it wasn’t crazy or tragically unfair to not vote him MVP when you take into account more of the context of that season.
From August 1st, 1995 to the end of the 1995 season (freely conceding “sample size” issues, etc.)
Albert Belle: .350/.439/.885 (58 games) 1.324 OPS
Mo Vaughn: .309/.386/.574 (56 games) .960 OPS
Player X on eventual ‘95 AL playoff team: .332/.417/.561 (55 games) .978 OPS
===
Can a .250 negative delta in OPS really be explained away by pointing to the quality of intradivision opponents? If Belle put up those numbers on a last place Indians team, there’d be some people who’d justify not voting for him because his team didn’t make the playoffs. But, is your argument that the Indians were “too good” for Belle to get your MVP vote?
They were too good because of Belle (and Thome and Ramirez, etc.), but there’s a lot to be said about being the best player within a lineup of players having great seasons.
And, if we’re talking “context”, Player X above is Red Sox SS John Valentin. His numbers for the ‘95 season were just a tick or two below Vaughn’s (OPS+: Vaughn, 144; Valentin, 138), while being a tick or two better “when it counted”. Valentin finished 9th in the MVP voting.
I feel pretty safe in calling “bias” WRT Vaughn over Belle in the MVP balloting that year.
I wouldn’t count 1984 as a good season for Rice. Again, 36 double plays. That’s a huge number of DPs, and he had that problem for a number of years.
But like I said, “I don’t think it’s a slam dunk difference, anyway”- so I basically agree. But that’s the essential problem with Jim Rice’s candidcay- he doesn’t clearly distinguish himself from the Belles and Evanses of the rest of the field. Damn fine ballplayer, but there’s nothing he brings to the table you can’t find in 20 other players.
E.C. – Agree, mostly. While he doesn’t distinguish himself from guys like Belle, Reggie Smith, et al., part of me thinks most of us have standards set too high for the HoF (as Bill James argued in The Politics of Glory). Since that’s not likely to change, though, I agree with you.
JI – Show me one definition of OPS+ that adjusts for era. Bith THT’s and BR’s glossary pages indicate that OPS+ adjusts for park factors, and league (by comparing OPS to league average), but not era. If you’re using OPS+ data from somebody else, or can enlighten me (other than just with your say so) as to where it adjusts for era, please do.
Adjusting for yearly park and league factor is adjusting for era.
I don’t think it does, and what I’m asking you for is something other than your say so that says it does.
What “league average” is clearly changes over time, and is affected by lots of variables, from what the make-up of the league is (influx of Latin and Asian players, or black plaerys in the late 40s and 50s) rule changes, and PEDs all come to mind. So, just because you are 40% better than league average in one era doesn’t mean you would be 40% better in another.
I think I see the problem…
There is no “league factor.” OPS+ does adjust for park factors, but beyond that it simply compares a player’s OPS to league average OPS. There are no adjustments for differences in league or era other than that – and that doesn’t do it.
Then I don’t know what you’re looking for because the league average changes every year. I also don’t know how we can accurately judge a layer other than how great he was compared to his peers.
Of course league average changes every year, but that doesn’t mean that league average 1982 = league average 1995. All OPS+ does is let you measure how great a player is relative to his peers, as you’ve said. Not versus someone in another era; compared to players in his own era. We can use OPS+ to judge whether a player was great versus other players of his era, but it gets much dicier when (as you have) you start claiming that a player from a vastly different era is way better.
You are sidestepping the argument, even though it was YOU who claimed that Belle’s peak “destroys” Rice’s peak. It’s fair for me to ask you how you are adjusting for the difference in era in making that claim.
Again I have no idea what you are looking for when adjusting for ‘era,’ it’s quite vague. What is an era? When does it start? When does it end? How is it defined? If you want to get into hypotheticals about Rice having access to weight training PEDs etc., I feel that those arguments are pointless.
As I’ve said, I’m adjust for era using the (admittedly crude) OPS+ numbers. Those numbers produce a value that factors in park factors, and the league average numbers, year-by-year, that the player played. Looking at Belle’s (easily) superior OPS+ numbers I can tell Belle dominated his peers, much more so than Rice ever did. I honestly don’t know how we can compare Rice to Belle without comparing them to their peers, since they played long after integration, and were not peers of each other.
You’re shifting the burden of defining an era and its impact to me. You were the one who said Belle’s peak “destroyed” Rice’s. I don’t know how we can make that judgment without accounting for differences in era.
Honestly, I don’t know the answers to your questions, but I do know that there are commonly accepted “eras” and that offensive performance differs across eras. I know that some (some BP stas for one; RCAA I think is another) have tried to adjust for differences in era. Not sure how, or how they define eras.
I agree with you that OPS+ does a decent, if crude, job of comparing players across eras. I disagree with you, though, that just because (say) Rice had a 157 OPS+ in 1978, while Belle had a 193 OPS+ in 1994, that that automatically means Belle had an “easily superior” year relative to his peers than Rice did [though at 193, it's a pretty sure bet
Maybe I shouldn't have used their career high OPS+ numbers.] In an era of greater expansion, “league average” in the 1990s might well be depressed from what it was in the 1970s, and unless we know that (and how far ahead of the pack of other excellent peers each were) it’s hard to tell. For instance, Belle’s 1994 OPS+ didn’t lead his league (18% worse than Frank Thomas), while Rice’s 1978 did (4% better than Larry Hisle, and 5% better than Ken Singleton).
Integration is not the only thing that can help “turn” an era. Things like rule changes (the prohibition of the spitball and other trick pitches, as well as no longer using a dirty baseball are among the reasons thought to have lead to the offensive explosion of the 20s and 30s; lowering the mound is another), integration, war, expansion, PEDs…. Call me crazy, but something is going on when the OPS+ that dominates in one era is 50% less than another, and HR numbers were commonly in the 30s even for sluggers in one while routinely in the high 40s and 50s in another, something is going on. They are not directly comparable.
All we can really do is look at those numbers and conclude that both were dominant players in their eras, during their peak (and Rice’s, while perhaps not as high or as consistently, was sustained better). Honestly, I don’t think there is a huge difference in either player, and I think both have marginal HoF credentials at best.
I’ve used baseball reference for rankings, but their HOF ranking stats have seemed flawed to me for quite awhile.
According to their list of league leading years if I exclude Awards, Games, AB, PA, SO, GIDP, CS, Outs and Salary:
Rice : 21 1st, 16 2nd, 71 top 5’s
Belle: 22 1st, 18 2nd, 73 top 5’s
It looks like Belle has a slight edge in where he ranked in his era using ranking by year / league.
SO/GIDP:
Rice : 5 1st, 11 top 5’s
Belle: 1 1st, 3 top 5’s
Rice’s .679 postseason OPS pales to Belle’s .972. Rice was the better fielder of the 2, but not by so much as to make up for all that. Then again Rice played the field in 1543 of his 2089 games (74%) and Belle in 1311 of his 1539 games (85%). Already mentioned is the late/close differential which is another big nod to Belle.
BP unfortunately gives credit to meaningless things like Salary and bad things like GIDP and SO. The only things they list there that are really bad to lead the league in is SO’s (sort of) and GIDP (definitely) leading the league in Outs isn’t even a bad thing, especially when you lead the league in AB’s and good offensive categories the same years. That’s why I find it flawed that they come up with this:
Rice 33 (49)/Belle 28(62)(Avg. HOF ≈ 27)
Rice 176 (57)/Belle 137 (119)(Avg. HOF ≈ 144)
Rice 43.0 (113)/Belle 36.1 (178)(Avg. HOF ≈ 50)
Rice 146.5 (85)/Belle 134.5 (98)(Likely HOF> 100)
Overall Rank in parentheses.
When Belle clearly was better among his peers than Rice in a better offensive era. That’s before looking at the league/park adjusted numbers like:
Rice : OPS+ 128, btWins 28.9
Belle: OPS+ 143, btWins 33.9
Although it is difficult to separate the numbers the average fan looks at:
Rice : .298/.352/.502 382HR 1451RBI
Belle: .295/.369/.564 381HR 1239RBI
Wishhiker:
Those “HoF ranking stats” are defined in B-R’s glossary. They’re based on some Bill James predictive tools, with an emphasis (for most of them)on “predictive” rather than “who should be in.” Frankly, given what I know about the four different monitors (Black Ink, Gray Ink, HOF Standards, HOF Monitor), it doesn’t look to far off. Several of them value later milestones more heavily than earlier ones. Since Rice’s career was 550 games longer than Belle’s, and his counting stats therefore higher, it isn’t surprising that Rice gets more of a nod than you think he should. It’s also not surprising that both guys look like marginal HoF candidates by these measures, since that is exactly how they’ve been treated by voters.
I will say I’m skeptical of judging who is better among peers mostly by looking at a summary of their ranks in various categories. That’s a pretty blunt tool. I’d go by the James tools first.
1 HR and 214 RBI’s in 2372 more AB’s? Less Steals, Walks Or is it the .03 in BA?
The negative .17 in OBP and .62 in SLG are bigger than that, and show in that.
I think it’s the particular weight on one MVP award and the 2452 hits to Belle’s 1726. Only explanation that makes sense to me.