Fred Lynn was a terrific player, my favorite 70’s Red Sox player. He was, sabermetrically speaking, as good or better than Jim Rice… when he was in the lineup. Prorating each players’ 1981 season out to a full 162 game season, Rice averaged 152 games over that 12 game stretch. Lynn, only 129. You can’t just average together OPS+ numbers when you’re dealing with seasons of incongruous plate appearances. Using the same logic, Larry Hisle has a better OPS+ run from 1978-1980 than Jim Rice.

Lynn’s 2 point advantage in absolute numerical average doesn’t outweigh Rice’s extra 23 games per season advantage.

And as an additional point of reference, two of Tony Oliva’s included “seasons” have 7 and 28 AB’s. Joe Torre posted an excellent 184 OPS+ in 1960… he went 1 for 2. There are numerous other players on the list who didn’t even have 12 seasons with 400 AB’s in their entire careers.

It’s a pretty misleading list when you give equal weighting to seasons of 230 AB’s and 2 AB’s to those of 600 AB’s.

Editor’s note: We’re not giving equal weight to those seasons. We’re looking at a 12-year span, with a minimum of 6000 plate appearances (500 per year). The OPS+ is over the entire stretch of time.

It doesn’t look like you’re willing to concede a hat-eating future, but if you eventually do I suggest you look to Homer Simpson for guidance on which type it should be:

“Nacho…nacho…hat…I want to eat…a nacho hat”

(sung to the tune of “Macho man”)

Home: .320/.374/.546 (.920)
Road: .277/.330/.459 (.789)

Gotta love playing in ol’ Fenway.

but the one thing that IS jumping out to me over the past several days is the case for Richie Allen to be in the HoF…given the stats listed in today’s post and his dominance over his prime…perhaps if Gene wouldn’t have panicked during the last 10 days of ‘64 with his ’stupid’ rotation of Bunning & Short, Bunning & Short, Bunning & Short, Bunning & Short, Bunning Short and the Phillies would have hung on to win the pennant, folks wouldn’t have ‘turned on’ Richie and Richie wouldn’t have demanded to be called “Dick” … who knows what a world series ring might have done to his reputation…I’m thinking we need to start a campaign to get the Phillies their 2nd Richie in the HoF…

Dick Allen’s carrer with a 750 run context

.314 Avg, .403 OB, .573 SLG – 391 HR 1322 RBI , 6558 AB

If you neutralize the stats of Belle and Rice to a 750 run context (Baseball Reference) this is what you get

Rice: .305 Avg, .359 OB, .512 SLG – 405 HR 1548 RBI 8558 AB

Belle: .300 Avg, .375 OB, .574 SLG – 407 HR 1316 RBI – 6131 AB

It would seem even if you neautralize the stats to the same run scoring environment Belle would come out ahead….