From Mike Fine’s lament on the BBWAA’s failure to elect Jim Rice through last year:
Suffice it to say that Rice’s offensive accomplishments were rather remarkable, but he still continues to be less than unimpressive amongst the voters. Maybe that’s the beauty of baseball-that statistics can be manipulated and debated and interpreted in so many different ways.
Or maybe there should be some guidelines for voters rather than to rely on subjectivity and personal feelings.
Rice is paying the price for the lack of guidelines, and he doesn’t deserve it.
This comes after he quotes a number of stats from Red Sox PR hack Dick Bresciani, the King of Selective Endpoints, who has been campaigning for Rice for at least a decade. So subjectivity is now hurting Rice? Where’s the objectivity in all this nonsense about how “feared” he was?
UPDATE: Okay, the spread of the Dick Bresciani bullshit is really getting under my skin. Let’s look at how badly he’s abusing statistics in Fine’s article:
The retired players with career home runs and average as high as Rice are Hank Aaron, Jimmy Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, all members of the Hall of Fame.
Talk about cherry-picking. Look, Rice had a pretty good and very limited peak, but compared to those guys, he’s a midget dwarf. Look at how many times each player on that list posted an OPS+ of 130 or better in his career, counting only full seasons:
| Aaron | 19 |
| Ott | 18 |
| Musial | 17 |
| Ruth | 17 |
| Mantle | 16 |
| Mays | 16 |
| Williams | 16 |
| Foxx | 13 |
| Gehrig | 13 |
| Rice | 6 |
Oh, but it gets better:
Seventeen players with 350-plus home runs and a .290-plus average have been on the Hall of Fame ballot, and all but Rice are in the Hall of Fame: Aaron, Cepeda, Joe DiMaggio, Foxx, Gehrig, Al Kaline, Mantle, Mays, Johnny Mize, Musial, Ott, Frank Robinson, Ruth, Snider, Billy Williams and Ted Williams.
Same criterion (full seasons with OPS+ >= 130), more players:
| Aaron | 19 |
| Ott | 18 |
| Musial | 17 |
| Ruth | 17 |
| Robinson | 17 |
| Mantle | 16 |
| Mays | 16 |
| T Williams | 16 |
| Foxx | 13 |
| Gehrig | 13 |
| Kaline | 13 |
| DiMaggio | 11 |
| Mize | 11 |
| Snider | 11 |
| Cepeda | 9 |
| B Williams | 9 |
| Rice | 6 |
Bresciani is counting on one simple thing: Voters will be so impressed by the names to whom he’s comparing Rice that they won’t bother to check his math. The worst player on that second, longer list had 50% more seasons of 130 OPS+ or better than Rice did. And I’m not saying that a 130 OPS+ is even a Hall of Fame season per se – it’s merely a good season; Frank Robinson posted a 150 OPS+ or better thirteen times in his career. That’s a Hall of Famer. Rice? He was a good player who now has a good PR guy. If you really think he belongs in the Hall, Dick, stop playing games with his stats to prove it.
Because, ultimately, most columnists and other such wags embrace the evidence that supports their guys and discard the evidence that does not.
Even if you get them to agree on objective statistics, you’ll get a response that it’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Statistical Superiority.
Which, of course, allows one to support whomever one chooses.
Can we do a better job of getting out the message that James’ HOF predictor tools, like the Monitor, are not meant to determine who SHOULD be elected, but rather who WILL be elected? The fact that Rice is not getting elected in spite of his Monitor totals is actually a fantastic testament to the fact that voters are getting smarter.
I think the argument against Rice has been made pretty cohesively, so allow me to veer away from it for a moment. Listening to the contentions for or against Rice, I’m prompted to think of another Red Sox slugger who spends a lot of time at DH and will undoubtedly be labeled as the “most feared hitter” of his generation: David Ortiz. Assume he exhibits a similar career pattern as Rice: dominant through age 33, then begins to regress into his mid-thirties (which with his body type is not a stretch). Say he finishes with his 139 OPS+; are we not having the same argument six years after he retires? Judging by how immensely popular Ortiz is, along with his 2 rings, this could get ugly…
Chris is right on. Except for the truly outlandish (yes, Todd Stottlemyre, I’m looking at you), you can make a case for anyone, however ridiculous or disingenuous it might be.
I get the impression that most writers just vote for the guys who “feel” like HOFers and find the stats to justify it, if they even get that far.
Phil, when the day comes, a better case could be made for Big Papi in the Hall than Rice, especially if Ortiz *finishes* his career with a 139 OPS+, which is higher than Rice’s 128. Ortiz has already had a more dominating five- or six-year stretch (take your pick) than anything Rice ever produced and is still going strong. Ortiz has increased his OPS+ every year during the past six years, posting a 171 last year, a number Rice never approached. Also in Ortiz’ favor is his hitting cannot be viewed as a product of Fenway Park, as was Rice’s. Yes, Ortiz is a better hitter at home in a number of categories, especially batting average because Fenway remains a great park for hitters, but he also hits for more HRs on the road, which is why his home/road OPS splits are close. In other words, he’s a dangerous hitter everywhere.
Working against Ortiz is he’s a DH. We’ll have to first see how Edgar does when he becomes eligible for the Hall since his lifetime OPS+ is a very Hall-worthy 147.
The problem that both Martinez and Ortiz will have concerns steroids. Although neither has been named in any report, both are suspected PED users, and there is a bias among a significant group of reporters to not vote for any player who they strongly suspect use PEDs.
Keith, HOF voting is often a trainwreck as you’ve pointed out. The main problem, as Chris alluded to, is that few voters actually begin the thought process with “is player X a Hall of Famer?” – they instead have the mindset of “player X was/was not a Hall of Famer, now let me find some numbers/anecdotes to support my conclusion”.
I usually find the arguments for Rice and Jack Morris to be particularly insane.
One comparison that I find interesting of the list of people with more seasons of OPS+ than Jim Rice is Orlando Cepeda. Looking at their careers in total, they are almost identical:
Jim Rice: .298/.352/.502 2452H, 382HR, 1451 RBI, 128 Career OPS+ in 2089 games
Cepeda: .297/.350/.499 2351H, 379HR, 1356 RBI, 133 Career OPS+ in 2124 games
I’m not arguing that Rice deserves to be in, but he does compare reasonably well to some other borderline hall of famers.
Damn, Keith’s hitting the ground running this year. I just find it amusing that Rice’s proponents still find ways to use his HR totals into their arguments when (a) there’s a lot more to good hitting than power and (b) his numbers aren’t that great anyway, especially compared with the guys on the first list.
It’s a good thing that he said “seventeen players with 350-plus home runs and a .290-plus average have been on the Hall of Fame ballot, and all but Rice are in the Hall of Fame,” and not “ONLY seventeen players…”
Because, off the top of my head, I can name two others who meet those criteria: Albert Belle (.295/381 HR) and Dick Allen (.292/351).
Neither, of course, are Hall of Famers, but both have about as strong a case as Rice, both statistically and using the nebulous and ridiculously subjective “fear” factor.
Keith… check out this article (ridiculous arguments for and against HOF votes). How can some of these guys (i.e. Woody Paige) actually have a HOF vote? It’s absurd.
http://vegaswatch.net/2007/12/worst-hall-of-fame-arguments-of-2008.html
p.s. my favorite was someone, apparently, voting against Tim Raines because his stolen base % was too high!
Chris – Vegas Watch is in my RSS reader – I never miss a post there. Great stuff.
Jim Rice is a great example of How Not to Use Statistics. Obviously, his supporters use stats that hold little true value to a player; they use counting stats, which everyone who reads this blog already knows what’s wrong with that. But what’s most frustrating to me is they forget to adjust for the fact he was a lousy fielding left fielder (where you were expected to hit well) who played in a hitter friendly park.
When that falls, his supporters claim “you had to have watched him play” as though that’s tangible evidence. Well, if I had watched him play everyday, I could say with confidence his career OPS was .854, which is light by HOF left fielder standards to say the least. When Juan Gonzalez become HOF eligable, I’ll rally his name just because he looked intiminating at the plate in my view and won two (undeserved) MVPs.