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.