Welcome to SoSH. You're right about the '70s perception, but Evans's best years began in 1981, and his career was the longest of the three. Overall, not just including the '70s, I'd rank them Evans, #1 Lynn #2, and Rice #3, although they are all close. Here's my modest previous post on this.

2003 Ballot

Eddie Murray
Ryne Sandberg
Jim Rice
Pete Rose
Alan Trammell

That's fair. I'll withdraw my ballot.
I look forward to voting in future, when I have a little more time to put some thought into it.

Could someone who's voting for Rice and not Lynn or Evans please explain why you think Rice had a better career than Lynn or Evans? I don't see it.

And "he was feared" is not a valid reason.

Edit: I don't mean to be flippant, or to put down people here who are making a sincere effort. But in the real world, Rice seems to have inexorable momentum to get to Cooperstown, and the other two never got any serious consideration, which makes no sense. It seems like a classic mass delusion.

Jim Rice:
16 seasons
8 All Star teams in 10 years
AL MVP (1978) – 5 other Top 5 MVP finishes
2 Silver Sluggers
6 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in Batting Average (spanning 12 seasons, 1975-86)
Led AL in Slugging % twice (77, 78), 6 other finishes in Top 10 (AL) in Slugging % (spanning 12 seasons, 1975-86)
6 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in Runs Scored (spanning 12 seasons, 1975-86)
9 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in RBI (spanning 12 seasons, 1975-86); led AL in RBI twice (1978 and 1983) – 1,451 RBI
Led AL in HR 3 times (77, 78, 83); finished in Top 10 4 other times (from 1976-83) – 382 Career HR
2,452 Career Hits
.298 career average (and if he’d retired when he should have, or at least before his abysmal 1989 effort, he’d have finished his career with a .300 average) – hit over .300 7 times in 13 full seasons

I think that for over a period of 12 seasons (1975-86), Jim Rice was one of the most dominant hitters in the game. I think he has both the career numbers to back up his induction (as well as how his individual season stats and accomplishments rate), and that is why I choose to vote for him for the SoSH Hall of Fame. However, I also think that if the HOF had Tiers, he would be on the lowest one (translation – if a player is less comparable, I’m less inclined to vote for him).

With regards to Lynn and Evans:

Fred Lynn:
17 seasons
9 consecutive All Star teams (1975-83)
AL MVP & ROY (1975) – 1 other finish in Top 5 for MVP
ALCS MVP (Brewers in 1982)
All Star MVP (1983)
4 Gold Gloves (1975, 78, 79, 80)
1 Batting title (1979, 3 other finishes in AL Top 10)
Led AL in Slugging % twice (75, 79), 2 other Top 10 finishes
2 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in Runs Scored (1975, when he led the AL; and 79)
2 finishes in top 10 (AL) in RBI (75, 79) – 1,111 RBI
2 finishes in top 10 (AL) in HR (79, 88) – 306 Career HR
.283 Career Batting Average (hit over .300 4 times in a full season, plus .298 and .299 once each)
1,960 Career Hits

Lynn was obviously a better defensive player, but I don’t think defense is enough to push an OF into the HOF with these stats. Do I think Lynn was a solid (very good) player and do I respect his contribution to the Red Sox organization? Of course. Do I think he’s a Hall of Famer? No.

Dewey Evans:
20 seasons
3 time All Star (1978, 81, 87)
8 Gold Gloves (1 of which was a tie)
2 Silver Sluggers
Highest finish for MVP was 3rd (1981), finished in Top 10 in 1982 (7), 1987 (4) and 1988 (9)
4 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in Slugging %
Led AL in Runs Scored once (1984); finished in Top 10 in 5 other years (81, 82, 85, 87, 88)
5 finishes in Top 10 (AL) in RBI (81, 84, 87, 88, 89) – 1,384 Career RBI
Led AL in HR once (1981); 4 other Top 10 finishes – 385 Career HR
.272 Career Batting Average (hit over .300 once in his career)
2,446 Career Hits

Again, same argument as with Lynn compared to Rice – Evans just doesn’t stack up when you look at how his individual season (and career) totals stacked up to his contemporaries. And also again – I think Dewey Evans was a solid player, and a great defensive OF, but I don’t think that pushes him into the HOF (which, IMO, should be for the best of the best by position).

You may not agree, and that’s fine. I vote for who I think should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. You vote for who you think should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. That’s the beauty of elections – we all have the right to our opinions.

2003 BALLOT
Hawk Dawson
Dwight Evans
Tom Henke
Tommy John
Eddie Murray
Graig Nettles
Pete Rose
Ken Singleton
Ryne Sandberg
Alan Trammell

* Finally found room for Trammell, and added Sandberg and Murray from the new eligibles.

* I'll need some convincing on Lee Smith if anyone's game. The dreaded "accumulator" tag keeps coming up whenever I start looking at his numbers.

* Another shout for Andre Dawson. Power, speed, defense and longevity + a career spent mainly on shitty teams and in shitty ballparks = HOF.

* I'll once again make my pitch for Tom Henke. DeltaForce's position is that his 789 IP comprise too brief a career window. But we've looked past that limitation for others like Joss and Koufax. Henke was a dominant closer for 9 seasons. His job only called for him to pitch X innings. He had a direct, positive impact on the outcome of many games, and it's a role every MLB team deemed important enough to fill.

It's time to recognize the closers, and to put Henke in his rightful place as one of the greats.

As someone who lived through the era, as I know TF and many others here did, there is no question that Rice was perceived as the future HOFer of the bunch during most of his career. In fact, as early as 1975 it was thought he might have the legs to catch Henry Aaron's 755 home runs. After 1979, which was another good season, I think people got myopic about how much he lost as a hitter. He was "feared" long after there was much to fear. As someone who watched those 1980s teams far more often than I wish I had, Rice was so frustrating to watch. Looking at Rice after 1979, 500 home runs was a lead-pipe cinch--if he was a stock, there is no stock you would rather put your money in. But 1980 and 1981 were two kicks in the teeth, and other than 1983 and 1986, it was one hell of a frustrating ride.

Evans became a great player at exactly the time that Rice stopped, so we never really got to have both of them at the same time. Lynn was the best of the group, although he just couldn't stay on the field for 150 games a year.

2003 ballot:

Andre Dawson
Dwight Evans
Rollie Fingers
Eddie Murray
Jim Ed Rice
Ryne Sandberg
Bruce Sutter
Alan Trammel

2003 Ballot

Dwight Evans
Rollie Fingers
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

Still on the fence w/r/t Lee Smith and Sutter. Going to really delve a bit more into that before the next ballot.

edit- backing off of Butler

Career OPS+:

Rice 128
Evans 127

Plus Evans's defense was game-changing. I'm not so much anti-Rice as I am pro-Evans.

Yup. But then don't bother quoting stats to defend your position. If we cherrypick our stats enough, anyone can make the HoF. I think Don Buddin should be in the HoF because his name was mentioned more often in Boston newspapers during his years here, and for about a decade after, than any other player of that time except Ted Williams.

The stats you "selected" in comparing Rice with the others were:

1. Four "votes" (yeah, those never display fan or mediot stupidity!): All Star teams, MVP, Gold Golves and Silver Sluggers. If you want to argue that people who don't have a clue thought that Rice was better, I concur.

2. Seasonal and career BA, which greatly distort performance by ignoring BBs and (what's truly important) ability to reach base and avoid outs (in which regard Evans was FAR better than Rice).

3. Two counting stats that are absolutely context-dependent (RBI and RS). Rice hit clean-up pretty much his entire career, whereas Evans often hit second, especially in his early years.

The only truly meaningful stats that you quoted which show an advantage to Rice are SA and homers (well, homers per out, actually).

Maybe if you'd used some more meaningful (i.e., less distorting) stats:
Career OBP: Rice = .352, Evans = .370.

Or if you're going to use career hits and times in the Top 10 in batting average, you'd also consider career BBs and times in the top 10 in OBP and BBs?

Rice: Career BBs = 670; Top 10 OBP = 2 (9th and 10th); BBs = 0

Evans: Career BBs = 1391; Top 10 OBP = 6 (once leading); BBs = 7 (3 times #1)

Note that I'm not claiming that Evans was a better offensive player than Rice. Rice had more power; but Evans played longer at a higher level of performance, and got on base much more often, on average. Rice had a career RC/27 of 6.33 to Evans' 6.09, but RC/27 is not park- or season-adjusted, and Rice had only 21.6% of his PAs in seasons with a league OPS of under .730, whereas Evans had 38.9% of his PAs in such offense-challenged years.

OPS+ (which IS park- and season-adjusted, but undervalues OBP) has Rice and Evans virtually even (Rice 128, Evans 127). So I don't think anyone can say for sure who had a better offensive career. But given Evans' FAR superior defense, Dwight was definitely the better player.

As you say, we all have the right to our opinions -- let's try not to cherrypick the stats to defend them, though.

I'm with Tudor -- supporting Rice for the HoF but not Evans is delusional.

2003 ballot
Don Mattingly
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Allan Trammell

I'm skeptical about Dawson, who had a good, long career, but who never had even one truly dominant season. And the Lynn/Rice/Evans comparisons remain intriguing. I continue to believe that Lynn was the best of the three when he was at his prime, but that he fell off way too quickly to be a HOFer. Evans probably had the best overall career in terms of being very good for a long time, but he was rarely dominant. And Rice? He had the most dominant single season of the three, but had neither the sustained peak of Lynn nor the overall career of Evans, and is overrated by the people who vote for the "real" hall.

So, I'm keeping all three out (again), but I remain open to arguments --- these guys were the heroes of my youth, as I'm sure they were for many of us --- and may yet change my mind. After all, I've been voting for Singleton (who was basically a rich man's Rice) and Mattingly (who was a rich man's Lynn), and there's not much of a gap between them and the Sox outfield.

Whitaker got in before Trammell. I didn't see that one coming.

Delta, I'm working on a trending chart of sorts, so you'll see something in picture form in a few minutes.

As for Mattingly vs. Lynn, remember that Lynn was a pretty good CF, which has much more value than a pretty good 1b.

Hitting wise, without really looking into it, I can see where they would have similar total value, but Rice and Singleton were pretty differently-skilled hitters.

I agree with everything you said (and I'm looking forward to the chart).

To clarify:

- I agree that Singleton (OBP) and Rice (SLG) brought different skills to the table. As you suggested, they come out fairly close on overall offensive measures, but I give Singleton the clear edge based on the relative importance of OBP and the fact that Singleton had more excellent years than Rice did.

- As for Lynn and Mattingly, I used an extreme shorthand (Mattingly is a rich man's Lynn) to convey my point that they were similar players in that they had a relatively short run of upper-echelon seasons. While Lynn has the clear advantage by playing a defensive position and playing it well (Mattingly played an unimportant defensive position well), I give Mattingly the edge for his offensive dominance. However, the stats aren't entirely consistent on this. If you go by WARP3, Mattingly was one of the top first basemen ever --- you need to go back to Foxx and Greenberg to find a 1B with better "top 3" or "top 5" WARP3 seasons. On the other hand, the win shares system isn't so kind --- you could easily make the case that contemporaries like Will Clark and McGwire were more dominant (although not Lynn).

I'm comfortable with voting for Singleton and Mattingly but not Lynn/Evans/Rice, but these guys are all very close to where I draw the line between HOF and not.

This is my primary motivation for putting Lynn above Rice, Evans, Dawson, Mattingly and Singleton (Ken Singleton?). It's when you compare Lynn to his CF peers that his qualities shine.

Playing with the Lee Sinins encyclopedia, Lynn is 8th in Runs Created Above Average (park and league adjusted) for post-war centerfielders, 5th among eligibles. Mickey, Willie, Duke and Larry Doby are ahead of him; Wynn, Ashburn, Puckett, Butler, and Murphy are behind him. Ron Cey, meanwhile, is only the 12th-best 3rd baseman of the post-war period, 8th-best eligible.

Lynn only suffers when you compare him to first basemen and corner outfielders, and even then he holds his own -- his OPS+, if not his counting stats, compares favorably to Evans, Rice, and Dawson. His OBP compared to Singleton is very competitive when you account for 100 fewer GDP.

Out of curiosity, if people are really behind a vote for a light-slugging walk-machine corner player like Singleton, I have to ask what happened to Jack Clark? Greg Luzinski? Singleton was a very good player, but the HoF seems a stretch.

I took the Red Sox outfield form the late 70's (which seems to be what we're discussing now...I want to present this before the relief pitcher fireworks start later in the week), and a contemporary that Has been getting good, but not great support in here.

Jim Rice
Ken Singleton
Dwight Evans
Fred Lynn

Using BPro's WARP3 (adjusted for defense, and league/park context...it's not a great stat, but useful for this exercise), I measured four things. Their WARP3 trends, their career cumulative WARP3, their 5 best overall seasons, and their 3 best consecutive seasons.

I did this in order to paint a somewhat objective picture of the player's career value, their peak value, and other such things. I say somewhat objective because by using 3 consecutive years, I'm not using 4. Blame Bill James.

Also, draw your own conclusions. I know how I think (vote Singleton)...I'm sure you don't need me (vote Singleton) campaigning while presenting this data (vote Singleton and Evans).

WARP3 by age


WARP3 over career


Best 5 seasons


Best 3 consecutive seasons

Singleton really wasn't light slugging though.

Playing in pitcher's parks for most of his career (Shea, and Memorial Stadium), he posted a career slug of .436. Which was against a league slugging of .387 (which is park adjusted). When you isolate the slugging, it's 22% (.154 vs. .124lg)

That index is 13% better than average. He's not Rice obviously, but when you combine the fact that his OB% is 20% better than league, you realize just what a good hitter he was. Walks and Isolated power just isn't very sexy. Singleton was pretty much the best right fielder in the American League in the late 70's.

First of all, welcome to the discussion. And you present a lot of fair points and questions. The answer, for me anyway, is "it's close." Heck, looking at Bill James's ratings alone shows how close it is: James had Lynn as the 17th best CF ever, Singleton at RF #18, Dawson at RF #19, Evans at RF #22, Jack Clark at RF #27, Rice at LF #27, and Luzinski at LF #35.

I can see the case for Jack Clark (less so for Luzinski), and I definitely can see the argument for Lynn. For me, my vote for Singleton was originally that I was trying to keep him from falling off the ballot when "sexier" players like Rice became eligible, but I've since convinced myself that he belongs. I'm a sucker for WARP3, and Singleton's best three seasons average to 9.8, which alone puts him in the conversation IMO. Win shares tells a similar tale, with his best three seasons averaging to 34. This puts him clearly ahead of Lynn (9.4, 31) and Jack Clark (8.1, 31). Not all the numbers favor Singleton over those two --- for example, both are ahead of Singleton in RC/27, and the Palmer/Gillette system has Clark way ahead of both in career value, and the WARP3-per-PA stat has Lynn comfortably ahead of both. Again, it's close. I went with Singleton because, as I saw it, he hits the sweet spot between career value and season-by-season dominance (even though he arguably falls short either on peak performance or on career value). I'm almost 50/50 on most of these guys, but I was trying to draw the line somewhere.

I don't mean to run down Ken Singlesandwalksaton; I realize he was a great hitter. I'm glad to see his name being bandied around. I've brought him up as a foil before when people discuss Jim Rice's HoF candidacy.

But he is light-slugging relative to the other guys we're talking about, including my man Lynn, who was pretty much the best centerfielder in the AL in the late '70s and early '80s both.

I understand that but he holds up better in comparison to guys like Lynn, Evans and Rice than you seem to give him credit for.

I put it in chart form, dammit.

Lahoud nails it when discussing the contemporary perception of Rice and Evans. During the 1979-80 offseason, for example, most everyone assumed, with reason, that Rice would end up as an inner circle Hall of Famer. His subsequent relative mediocrity was initially very surprising and, by 1983 or so, sadly predictable.

Evans, on the other hand, was widely viewed, with some justification, as an underachiever and a disappointment through 1980. His excellence from 1981 on was as much of a surprise as Rice’s concurrent loss of excellence. Did you know that, in 1981 and 1982, Evans had more win shares (57) than anyone except Mike Schmidt (67)? Dewey had more than Rickey Henderson (55), or Gary Carter (48), two obvious Hall of Famers at the peak of their game.

I think Evans was hurt by three things: (1) people formed an impression of him in the 1970s and didn’t revise their road maps enough based on changed circumstances (kind of the reverse of what happened with Rice); (2) the Red Sox of the early 1980’s were losing the interest of the casual fans, because of the Sullivan/LeRoux sleaze and incompetence; and (3) Evans was on his way to a season for the ages in 1981, and the strike derailed it.

Anyway, here’s my vote:

2003 ballot
Dwight Evans
Don Mattingly
Eddie Murray
Graig Nettles
Pete Rose
Jared Sandberg’s uncle
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

No borderline cases among the noobs, although both Darren Daulton and Mickey Tettleton were very good and generally quite underrated.

Mabrowndog, I hear you about Henke and am starting to waver a bit. If any save rule 1-inning closer other than Fruitbat deserves to get in, it’s him and not someone like Trevor Hoffman.

2003 Ballot
Andre Dawson
Dwight Evans
Tommy John
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

I always felt "Ryno" was an annoying nickname.

The long layoff altered my view of voting. I'm appreciating the longevity of Dawson, Evans, and John more than the peaks of Rice and Mattingly.

Not an ounce of love for Willie Randolph? James ranks him 17, between Gordon and Doerr...both of whom cruised into our Hall on the 3rd ballot. Given his era, most of Willie's raw stats get adjusted upward, so that .373 OBA really stands out. If he hadn't had a disasterous 1981, the all-around picture would look much better. But that's what Willie gave you, an all-around game: a long, generally consistant career as a top-of-the line up hitter and a very solid 2B.

I'm going to have to work out the reliever issue. It seems to be what's being bandied about here is a sort of hyperbolic relationship between innings pitched and value - I just can't figure where that asymptote for minimum innings pithed should be (above Henke's 790?) and how steep the curve should be for a HoF reliever. Maybe it makes most sense to work backwards from a near-consensus modern closer such as Rivera?

With all due respect for the fine people advocating his cause, here is my take on Henke.

0. ERA is essentially irrelevant for a reliever, or at least the error bars make it so. Throw ERA+ out the door and come up with a list of accomplishments for Tom Henke please.

1. For the most part, I think Henke defines the near irrelevancy of the closer role. He was was a very good pitcher who rarely pitched. Whether this was solely the manager's decision or whether this was a flaw in Henke's makeup I can not say. I know there are people out there who think a pitcher should get extra credit for sitting in the bullpen because the manager wants him to. Not me.

2. During the era of the great Blue Jays teams, he wasn't even their best reliever. Duane Ward was pitching twice as many innings (really), was pitching better than Henke, and was pitching the most important innings of the game.

3. After the Blue Jays title in 1992, Henke left to go to Texas, and the Blue Jays reacted to this devastating news by (1) putting a better pitcher in the role, (2) winning the title again.

I don't like artificial cutoffs for the Hall of Fame. But any reliever who pitches less than 1200 innings has to bring a sack of accomplishments to the table to get my vote. What does Henke bring? 1 Save Title? Frickin' Todd Jones has two. Five times in the top 5 in saves? He pitched on one of the best teams of his era and was paid money to get saves, and he ends up in the top 5 just 5 times? What does that tell you? Two all-star teams, just like Scott Cooper?

I would not put Henke in the top 40 relievers all-time. I would rather have Mike Timlin's career, and I am 100% serious about that.

But that's just me.

Here's just a quick & dirty look at the sort of bar we have set recently for admitting pitchers to the SoSH HoF. For this, I'm simply using career innings pitched as the independent variable and Baseball Prospectus' DERA (adjusted all-time) as the dependent. In my view, DERA does the best job of equaling out differences between starters and relievers, though it aint perfect. The purpose here is simply to assess how we're looking at pitchers and making decisions to admit.

This first graph is a curve fitted for all our pitcher admits from 1990 onwards. I chose 1990 because that generally meant the pitchers were working well into the era of expanded roles for relievers. It also gets Gossage on the map.

Note, all-time DERA is normalized to 4.50.

This graph includes (in order of admission):
Jim Palmer
Gaylord Perry
Tom Seaver
Steve Carlton
Phil Niekro
Catfish Hunter
Don Sutton
Bert Blyleven
Nolan Ryan
Goose Gossage



I fit a logrithmic curve here because my sense was, and it seems that, the more innings a guy pitches, the lower quality of pitching we'll tolerate within some scope. For relievers, this suggests that the fewer the innings, a near exponential increase in quality is necessary.

Of course, Goose is the point to the far left here. Catfish, interetsingly, is that outlayer way up high around 3500IP. If you need further evidence of Tom Seaver's dominance, than check out his point: way down at 3.65 for 4700 or so IP. Above 5000IP, we're generally looking at a 4DERA (half-run better than average), with a tolerance of a fifth of a run (represented by Don Sutton).

Here's the curve refitted to include the gaggle of players we've been debating as of late:
Rollie Fingers
Tom Henke
Tommy John
The Quiz
Bruce Sutter
Kent Tekulve



So in comparing all these pitchers, we see that Tommy John is a bit above the curve (4700IP, 4.31DERA), a shade more than Sutton, but much closer than Catfish.

As for the relievers (under 2000IP), we get Sutter, Tekulve, and Fingers above the curve reading from left to right. Below the curve, left to right, we have Henke, Quiz, and Goose. So by the abritrary curve here, only Fingers sits way outside; Sutter and Tekulve aren't far off the mark. Henke and Quiz sit comformatbly within the range.

But Henke's odd here because he's really the only modern, 1-inning closer specialist on the list. So here's the curve again with a the following players who had excellent careers in a similar role (going up through active players near-to the end of their careers to increase the sample):
Lee Smith
Mo Rivera
Trevor Hoffman
John Franco



[L to R, above line: Quiz, Sutter, Franco, Smith, Tekulve, Fingers, Catfish, Palmer, John, Sutton
L to R, line runs thru: Gossage, Ryan
L to R, below line: Henke, Rivera, Hoffman, Seaver, Blyleven, Carlton, Perry, Niekro]

So on the left side with the modern closers included, Henke, Hoffman, and Rivera sit below the line (Rivera way below the line with a 2.34 DERA). The increase in steepness puts Goose on the line, Quiz and Smith just above, Fingers even further above. Sutter, Tekulve, and Franco sort of group together above the line, probably outside the limit of voted in.

If I had the desire, I'd go back and add in a few more starters who got consideration but didn't make our Hall to increase the sample and normalize the curve a bit more. But, by this quick and dirty look at where we have set the bar recently:
Tommy John looks like a stretch;
Gossage was as expected;
Fingers is a stretch;
if you set the threshold at 1000IP - Quiz & Smith are seemingly fitting while Tekulve, Franco, & Sutter are stretches;
If you consider careers below 1000IP - Henke, Hoffman, and especially Rivera are fitting selections.

Personally, I would draw the curve very steep between 800 & 2000IP (pretty much running through Rivera and Gossage) and then generally follow the curve in place through 5500IP, with a slight move upward to about 4.2DERA at 5000IP. I think at the low-IP (2000IP and below) end, the quality really should be exponentially greater than the quality above 3500IP. For me that means Rivera, Gossage, and John in; Hoffman, Henke, Quiz, and Smith being relatively small stretches; and Sutter, Fingers, Tekulve, & Franco out.

I was just curious, so I ran these...

DERA/IP Curve for all SoSH HoF Pitchers except: Satchel Paige & 19thC players (including Cy Young)



Then I added in a number of relievers/closers to see how things would look:



This includes everyone in top-20 for saves plus a few other historical standouts. This reinforces my stance that the measures for relievers must be much, much more stringent (near exponentially so) to qualify for consideration.

SoSH HoF plus:
Rollie Fingers
Tom Henke
Tommy John
The Quiz
Bruce Sutter
Kent Tekulve
Lee Smith
Mo Rivera
Trevor Hoffman
John Franco
Jeff Reardon
Randy Myers
John Wetteland
Firpo Marberry
Sparky Lyle
Eck
Doug Jones
Troy Percival
Roberto Hernandez
Rick Aguilera
Jeff Montegomery
Dave Righetti
Tug McGraw
Billy Wagner
Jose Mesa

Back to the Rice debate for a second, I think Lahoud makes a great point about how good Rice was in his day. Peak value is very important. Here's just a quick table to illustrate in one way the peak value of Rice, Evans, Lynn and some of their contemporaries.

Using Batting Runs Created, we can define a monster season as creating 100 batting runs over the course of a single season. 100-BRC seasons are a relative rarity over the history of the game. Here are the numbers of such seasons for Rice, Evans, Lynn and others:



I am of the opinion that some concessions have to be made for players who had five excellent seasons, in spite of their cumulative numbers. I think we got it right with Murphy in this, and need to follow that up by electing Rice and Singleton.

Evans and Dave Parker should get some serious consideration too. For different reasons, their relatively long careers were a little short on cumulative numbers, but when they were in their primes, they were very, very good.

There are two additional points that need to go along with VAL's table.

First, Jim Rice used up an extraordinary number of outs compared to most of the players on the list because of his low walk total. Evans 120 RCs are much more valuable than Rice's. Using the metric RC/27, which James used to use back in the day, Rice was much less impressive than at first glance.

Second, Rice was a LF/DH, which matters in this debate. Similarly, Singleton brought nothing to the table other than his good bat. Evans and Murphy, to name two, did.

All these guys are good players. There are literally hundreds of guys in this category, players with things that recommend them and things that weigh against them. Rice's pros were big and bold, and his cons nick away at his resume little by little. Its not easy to sort out.

VAL, correct me if this is wrong, but your table appears to be based on raw RC, without any adjustment for home park or era. If so, it's of at best very limited utility in evaluating Rice. According to your table, for example, he was a better offensive player than Reggie Jackson, which is absurd. Reggie had a career OPS+ of 139, with 7 seasons at 150 or higher. Rice's career OPS+ was 128, with 2 seasons of 150 or higher. Context is critical.

Well ... no, I don't agree with this. The BRC are, indeed cumulative, but walks are included in that, so Evans gets extra points for the walks, but for Rice to have put up three 120+ BRC seasons with his low walk rate is even more extraordinary. Look at his near contemporary and HOFer Reggie Jackson. Reggie didn't walk much, and see how many 100+ seasons he garnered. I think those totals are even more extraordinary in spite of his low walk totals.

RC gives Evans credit for the walks, but it does not give Rice a demerit for the out. This is why the inventor of RC, Bill James, would never use RCs without context. The context was outs. Without the outs, RC doesn't tell you what you want to know.

This is the elephant in the room for Rice. It took him an extraordinary amount of outs to get those RCs.

Reggie walked 1375 times, good for 27th best of all time. You meant "Rice didn't walk much", right?

Lahoud,

Sorry for the confusion. I'm not talking about RC, I am talking about BRC, which is the linear-weighted value of theoretical runs I use in my analysis. I think the formula is on the Wiki, but it fully accounts for the outs.

As Tudor points out, it does not take park, era and league effects into account, but that is by design. It's my feeling that the generic corrections used in many of the historical statistics that are core to this discussion are extremely flawed in their design, and probably provide as much disinformation as clarity to the historical picture. I did an analysis a while back that showed pretty well that Rice was probably hindered by Fenway, rather than helped, while both Evans and Lynn gained a significant advantage from playing here. In the modern context, we have also proven that neither Manny nor Papi gain any advantage from playing in Fenway, yet the park factors still correct for it.

I don't think Jackson was hindered by playing in Oakland and Baltimore in the way that park corrections give him credit either. His power transcended park dimensions, and the weaker parts of his game were neither helped nor hindered by park. It is certainly true that Jackson began his career earlier than Rice (in 1967), but they played 12 seasons against each other. Incidentally, Jackson's best BRC season (124) was in 1969.

I don't mean to disparage Reggie - he had many BRC seasons in the high 80's and 90's which were very good, and he was a monster hitter. For most of those 12 seasons, though, Rice was better and considered so in the context of his times.

VAL, a few things.

1. I think you are the only analyst that does not apply park effects to correct for run context. All other analysts, as far as I know, determine run environments and use them to normalize a player's statistics--regardless of how that individual player might or might not have been effected by his park (which is largely unknowable). Your attempts to apply effects individually are noble, but are irrelevant to real world value.

That said ...

2. Road statistics (OBP/SLG):

Reggie Jackson: .362/.499
Jim Rice: .330/.459

The difference in these stats (30 points of OBP and 40 points of slugging) is massive. This despite the fact that Jackson was good enought to play 730 more games than Rice.

3. I am not sure why you want to compare the players only during their overlapping 12 years. This cleverly removes the prime of Jackson's career--his MVP, his great 1969 season, other outstanding seasons--and also removes Rice's 1988-89 denoument--his "Crespo Years" ™. The fact that they overlapped so much was because Reggie, unlike Rice, was good enough to play until he was 40.

Actually I am not sure if you were trying to compare them in any real sense. Perhaps Jackson was just a foil for your study. But Jackson was a vastly better hitter, a vastly better fielder, and a vastly better baserunner.

Good points. I picked Reggie because he only had two 100+ BRC seasons. That's due to an oddity that I can't explain from memory (perhaps you can) - that Reggie only had two seasons through his career where he got 650 PAs. 650 PA's is generally the average number to expect for a regular player, so I have no idea why Reggie would have had so few during his career.

I keep going back and forth on Rice (hopefully he will be either elected or run out of eligibility soon so that I can sleep at nights ). His career is very difficult to analyze in its entirety, as you well know from the research you had to do to write your article for last year's annual. It does piss me off, though, that it gets reduced to a single number (OPS+) or especially when anyone mentions "Rice" and "GIDP" in the same sentence as if that were a significant detractor to anyone's career - especially one who hit the ball as hard as Big Jim Ed.

I almost wish Rice had been drafted by the Indians or had not played during those three monster seasons of 77-79. Those were Rice's monster home run years, of course, but also the years where he used the Fenway advantage. In fact nearly all of his home-road discrepancy occurred during these three seasons. Maybe Fenway played easy those three seasons, but it's more likely that Rice developed an upper-cut swing and used the Monster to the tune of an 82-42 H/R HR split over that time. During the three seasons prior to 1977, and for the rest of his career after 1979, Rice's home-road splits were normal.

The odd result of those three years was that they miscast Jim Rice as a big time HR hitter, when in fact, he was not. For the rest of his career, Rice was a line drive hitter without peer. He was a .310 BA, 30+ double, 25-30 HR kind of hitter (who hit 15 triples in a season twice!), more like a Dave Winfield than a Reggie Jackson-type HR hitter. It's sort of an irony that, in retrospect we seem to forget that, and evaluate him more by his HR totals than by his doubles, hits and batting average. I don't know what happened during those three big HR years, or why he went back to being the way he was before in 1980, but in the end, I think those three big years ended hurting him in HOF consideration. We tend to look at him as a HR hitter and find his 373 career HRs disappointing, rather than a line drive hitter who hit an impressive 373 HRs and drove in 100 runs or more eight times.

So ultimately, I'm voting for him. Here's my ballot:

Dewey Evans
Tommy John
Kirk McCaskill (because he was a UVM hockey player too!)
Eddie Murray
Jim Ed Rice
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

I also have some love for both Lance Parrish and Tony Pena as catchers. Parrish put up some impressive numbers as part of some great Tigers teams, and Pena was probably the greatest defensive catcher in his era. I want to look a little bit closer at their careers before we let them fade into oblivion.

Edit: Deleted Puckett and added Rose - but I get to chair the veteran's committee!!!

The biggest reason, I believe is that Reggie just played in a very low run environment. Take 1974, when Jackson was almost certainly the best player in the league, while picking up only 600 plate appearances. He played on a team that scored 689 runs while allowing 551, numbers which look like science fiction today. But that was what baseball was like in Oakland Coliseum in those days, and the A's were the best team in the world. Reggie was their best player, but it was unusual for the batting order to get around to him a fifth time.

Reggie was pretty durable. Rice was very durable, and this is to his credit.


I guess, although without those three seasons he would not be talked about much at all. It is essentially impossible for a left fielder to have value with no walks and mid-range power. Rice needed the power to be a star.

Rice has got a decent case, don't get me wrong. All this commentary of late has cast me as the anti-Rice guy, but I am really just trying to explain why he is not the obvious guy everyone thought he would be (and some still think he should be). He is one of hundreds of guys on the bubble. He was a fine hitter for 12 years, which ain't bad.

If he was 10% better or his career were 10% longer, he'd be in already.

I think he's going to be a beneficiary of the steroids scandal. His HR totals didn't look too impressive 10 years after he left the game, but they look alot better now.

Andre Dawson
Dwight Evans
Fred Lynn
Eddie Murray
Jim Rice
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

I could be wrong here, but just to clarify- Puckett's already in, I believe. He got 80% on the last ballot.

2003 Ballot:
Brett Butler
Dwight Evans
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Ken Singleton
Alan Trammell

I've come full circle on Rose. When we started this, I thought there would never be a time I would vote for him.

I guess my moral high horse is glue.

The thing is, this isn't the "real" hall, so it's not like we're really punishing him by keeping him out. We may as well just put the best players in IMO.

Sincerely,

One of the guys who voted against Shoeless Joe

Hah ... I kind of was having a morale reevaluation similar to URI's until you reminded me why I wasn't voting for Rose ...

Joe's transgressions were worse than Rose's, so there's always that angle. But even were that not the case, there's no point in voting against Rose just because we voted against Jackson --- that was a long time ago. We were so young and naive back then.

OK ... I'll switch my vote on Rose, but I am going to have a hard time with the Roid-heads.

I agree with your logic, but your hypothetical is moot, because we did not err in excluding Jackson. Conspiring to throw a championship is far worse than anything Rose or the Roid Brigade did.

Well ... I am not going to argue about Jackson at this point in the proceedings, but I was running my new Contact Value metric through the spread sheets the other day, and when I sorted by CV descending over the entire set of batters from 1960, the names of the steroid culprits rose to the very top of the list like turds in a swimming pool. You literally have to go through two pages worth of inflated numbers from guys like Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Bagwell, Giambi (and a few others) until you hit "real" numbers from guys like Mantle, Griffey, Aaron etc. Its so distinct that I can probably tell you what year most of these guys started using. From a HOF perspective, Barry Bonds after the 1999 season with 445 HRs in my book, and McGwire and Giambi never played a game in the major leagues.

Time to get back in the game. Missed 02 but pretty cool to see Ron Cey in, a guy I plugged for years.

My ballot:

Dan Quisenberry. Let's compare Quiz to Sutter, who is not in our Hall of Fame but in the real one. They both pitched basically the same number of innings (Quiz pitched 1 more). But Quiz's ERA+ is 10 pts higher.

Sutter definitely had the best season of the duo (1977, 1.34 ERA in 107 ip) but Quiz was much more consistent. You basically never got a bad season from the guy - his first below average season was at 36 years old and there's good reason to believe that was due to a poor defense, as he was traded from KC to St Louis where Bob Horner and Luis Alicea were manning the right side of the infield. Death by groundballs, IMHO. The next year Whitey put Pedro Guerrero - no Gold Glove but a hell of a lot better than Bob Horner - and Jose Oquendo and Quisenberry bounced back with a fine season.

I think Quiz is not sure-fire Hall of Famer, but he's maybe the best reliever of the 80s. Goose's really mind blowing years came in the late 70s, Eck wasn't established until very late in the decade, and..well, am I forgetting anybody?

Eddie Murray. No doubt about it Hall of Famer. Great hitter. Bill James wrote a pretty good essay on the guy in which he stated Murray never had a bad season. He's not far off the mark. The only thing that comes close is a pedestrian 1991 in which he had only a 105 OPS+. But that Dodgers team was weak on offense (other than Darryl, not much) and he still drove in 96 runs, so he wasn't terrible.

94 was genuinely poor, but 95 was great and after that he was in his 40s and no longer productive. So one bad season out of 20, and those 19 good years saw some years when he was the best hitter in the American League.

Yeah, that makes you an HOFer.

Ryne Sandberg. Is his 1984 a great year or what? That may be one of the best years ever in terms of a ballplayer who did everything well.

He played 156 games. He hit .314. He had 200 hits. He scored 114 runs, which led the league. He had 36 doubles. He had 19 triples, which led the league. He hit 19 home runs, back when that showed good pop, even in Wrigley. He stole 32 out of 39 bases. He drove in 84 runs despite batting second. He also won the Gold Glove for defensive excellence and deserved it. Ryne Sandberg could hurt you in so many different ways it's not even funny. A single, an extra base hit, a homer, a steal, a great play in the field. Awesome.

If you meet a Cubs fan who was around for 1984, ask him about June 23rd, 1984. A nationally televised game against the Cardinals at a packed Wrigley Field. For Cubs fans, this is the Bill Mueller HR/A-Rod fight game on July 27th, 2004. It was Sandberg's coming out party. Not one but two game tying home runs off Bruce Sutter in the 9th and 10th innings. 5-6, 7 RBIs, and he made 7 assists and 2 putouts in the field, far more than any other Cubs fielder bar first baseman Leon Durham.

A few years ago, back when ESPN Classic actually showed baseball and I had the time to watch it, I watched this game. It's really a tremendous baseball game. The Cubs won 12-11 in 11 and it was a nail biter that both teams really wanted to win. Truly as important a game as you'll get in June - Herzog put Sutter in with 1 outs in the 7th to quell a potential Cubs rally. The Cubs came back from a 9-3 deficit to 9-8 (helped by a key 2 run single by Sandberg) before Sandberg homered to start the 9th.

The Cards then got 2 in the 10th to make it 11-9. Sutter got 2 outs, walked Dernier and then pitched to Sandberg who deposited one into the left field bleachers as Wrigley shook. The Cubs won it in the 11th.

Great game. Ask any Cubs fan who was around then and they'll remember it and their eyes will light up in joy at the mention of "The Sandberg Game".

Dwight Evans. Other people have made the arguments, and they're convincing.

Alan Trammell. Definitely a Hall of Famer in my book. He had the misfortune of spreading out some of his good years, which diluted his impact, and also of having several years of eh play at each end of his career - he came to the majors as a 19 year old and played a full season at 20, and he also played a year, maybe two years too long in the majors. But the man broke the 130 OPS+ mark at shortstop six times, which is of tremendous value when you combine it with good defense and some leadership like Trammell did. He was a .300 and above hitter in his good years, topping at .343 in 1987 (a year in which he was jobbed out of the MVP). He had excellent doubles power and some home run power. He had good speed, stealing 236 bases. He also had a very good ability to not strike out, but not into very many double plays either. He didn't do one thing better than anything else, but he basically had no severe weaknesses in his game. That'll make you a Hall of Famer at shortstop. His double play partner Sweet Lou is in, so Tram should be too.

Mickey Tettleton. Really? Yeah. Now Tettleton had some gaping flaws. I don't think he was regarded as a very good catcher, and certainly the numbers indicate this. He never caught over 125 games, and only caught over 100 games once. He seems to have been platooned for several years, only playing full time at the age of 27.

But damn, he could hit. He had that funny way of holding his bat, looking like was a samurai presenting his sword to the sensei, and then he'd bring it back up and hit the crap out of the ball if he liked it. He had a distinctly Bartlebian approach to his game, taking many pitches (he had over 100 walks five times, had another two years with 95 and 97, and struck out over 100 times 7 times). He only hit .241 for his career, and a couple years he had trouble hitting his weight.

But all those walks gave him a very good on base percentage (369, and he was at about 380 in his prime) and he hit over 30 home runs three years in a row at Detroit, and a fourth time at Texas when he was a full time iron glove outfielder/DH.

He's probably not a Hall of Famer, but when he was catching even 70 games a year, he was offering excellent value to his team. He's underrated because his best years came right after the Tigers were good and before the offensive boom began. He only got a full time shot after Frank Robinson came around - recognizing Tettleton as one of the best hitters on the team, he started DHing him when he wasn't catching, putting that extra bat in the lineup. He played a small, but important role in the 54-107 1988 Orioles turning into the 87-75 1989 Orioles, who missed the division by 2 games.

I am going to pretty much ignore the steroids issue, FWIW. I just don't really know who did what ... and neither do you.

Did Paul Molitor do steroids? Ivan Rodriguez? Who is more likely--Sammy Sosa or Roger Clemens? Did Rickey Henderson do steroids? Larry Walker? Mariano Rivera?

Hint: your answers won't be the same as my answers.

Another hint: don't just suspect the power hitters.

We might have to shut down the Hall of Fame. 75% is a tough standard, but if we have to get 75% to believe that you didn't juice AND are good enough to be enshrined, that's a pretty tough hurdle. We might literally never elect another person.

I guarantee you this: there are several current HOFers who did steroids. Who they are, we don't know.

Rollie Fingers
Tom Henke
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Bruce Sutter

Would you really rather have Brett Butler over Fred Lynn? Butler was a great player, especially in the OBP uber alles sense, which I respect, but like Singleton I think he falls a bit short as an overall player.

My completely sans numbers case for Lynn is that he's the '70s equivalent of Bernie Williams. Neither one is really a flashy package career-numbers wise, but both were a) gold glove centerfielders who were b) several times the best hitters on championship-caliber teams.

I'm not saying that construct has to, or should be, anyone's threshold for HoF induction, but it's a pretty rare and valuable bird, I think. As far as I know, there are no other eligibles who you could make that claim for. Kirby Puckett and Dale Murphy fit the bill, and without markedly superior career numbers to Lynn, they are both in.


2003

Fred Lynn
Eddie Murray
Pete Rose
Ryne Sandberg
Alan Trammell

No, I made a one year "cosmetic vote"...it's something everyone has done in this thread.

He won't be around on my ballot next year. I'm starting to think you are voting for outfielders in the Fred Lynn lens...do they match up to the standard that you think Lynn set.

Unfortunately, you are doing that at the expense of a guy that was a better player. Singleton was a better player than Butler to be sure, but he was also better than Lynn. Unfortunately, he did it pretty much entirely in pitcher's parks, while not being as flashy as Lynn, or as "powerfully" as Rice.

Lynn has the problem of being a matinee idol type that had few self-determined HOF-level years than some of the other guys discussed. Perhaps if he stayed in Boston, he would be in now...but he didn't, and isn't.

As of now, five hours before the deadline, we have five guys elected, four by comfortable margins.

There is one player holding on by a string, and there is one who just needs one more vote from the people that left him off the ballot this round. The great irony is that the players that right now are teetering on the brink of our HOF are very similarly skilled batters.