Comments on: A Thought About Jim Rice

By: A Thought About Jim Rice : Trends

A Thought About Jim Rice : Trends — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:24:49 +0000

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By: A Thought About Jim Rice

A Thought About Jim Rice — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:24:10 +0000

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By: Taylor Crouse

Taylor Crouse — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:14:08 +0000

The following is a direct quote from Rob Neyer -a childhood Royals fan by the way- regarding the candidacy of Edgar Martinez:

There have been six players with long careers who played at least 50 percent of their career games as the DH. Yes, I cherry-picked that 50 percent; if I made it 60 percent, there would be only three players. But 50 percent is an elegantly simple cutoff, and it also gets us what we really want: a list of players with long careers and very little defensive value. We could, of course, extend the list to poor-fielding first basemen and corner outfielders, but that wouldn’t do Edgar Martinez any favors. So we’ll stick with these six: Harold Baines, Frank Thomas, Don Baylor, Edgar Martinez, Hal McRae and David Ortiz.

Is Martinez the most impressive hitter in this group? Clearly, he is not. He’s third in hits and times on base, and fourth in home runs, runs scored and RBIs. Quantitatively, he’s nothing special. Qualitatively, though? That’s where Edgar shines. His .418 career on-base percentage is second-best, just a hair behind Thomas. And his .515 slugging percentage trails only Thomas and Ortiz (and, of course, Ortiz’s decline phase is still ahead of him). I don’t have any qualms about describing Martinez as the second-greatest DH in American League history.

Does that make him a Hall of Famer? I suspect not. He was a great hitter, one of the best of the past 20 years, comparable to Bagwell and Thome. But because Martinez got a late start and had problems staying healthy, he didn’t pile up the career numbers those players did (and Thome continues to do). Edgar’s lack of defensive value is a problem, but perhaps a bigger problem is the fact that during his career a lot of guys were piling up numbers and there’s little to set him apart from his peers.

By: David in NYC

David in NYC — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:10:39 +0000

That should be “10 New York players”, not “10 Yankees”, in the first sentence of graf #3.

By: David in NYC

David in NYC — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:09:18 +0000

@Quinn #3 –

The so-called New York bias has been debunked so many times I am not going to repeat the research here.

Your statement could just as well (or, actually, more accurately) have read “probably not an accident that the best players from those random years are also heavily loaded with players from [pennant- and World Series-winning teams]”

The four lists Joe presents contain 10 Yankees out of 40 players, or 25%. During the time periods covered by these lists, totaling 24 years, and taking into account the varying numbers of teams in both MLB and New York, the New York teams made up roughly 13% of the teams, yet won 46% of the pennants and 50% of the World Series.

Sounds to me like they are UNDER-represented.

By: Mike in Hawaii

Mike in Hawaii — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:16:06 +0000

The only thing about Jim Rice’s induction that rubs me the wrong way is the way he said “we” and “Hall of Famers like us” before he was even inducted. I mean seriously, there is a picture of this guy next to the word “borderline” in the dictionary. I understand you’re either a HOFer or you’re not, and he is one now, but still. I just imagine the luminary Hall of Famers looking down at Jim Rice and chuckling at his inclusion, much like we chuckle at a baby and say, “Awww, he thinks he’s a grown-up”. Cute, but insubstantial. Although I will reluctantly acknowledge that Jim Rice DID lead MLB in RBI’s from the arbitrary dates of July 15 1975 to September 3rd 1983 with RISP and less than 2 outs while within 5 games of the division lead while playing for an AL East team with a name that starts with “B”, but not to include Baltimore, and the temperature within 22 degrees of freezing, against lefthanded pitchers working while issued temporary visas on teams managed by Billy Martin, but only when Martin was managing the A’s. That is one stat that simply can’t be overlooked.

PS–See, anything is true if you give it enough qualifiers.

By: Spud

Spud — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:11:01 +0000

Raines also missed April that year because of the May 1 re-signing rule. And the Expos were in the race to the very end.

Dawson was most valuable because without him the Cubs … would have sucked even more?

By: Mark Daniel

Mark Daniel — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:46:58 +0000

Jim Rice was actually a pretty remarkable hitter. For example, he was a .300 hitter who hit with power. Those kinds of guys were pretty rare in the mid-late 70s. I mean, a few guys did it, like George Foster, Fred Lynn and Greg Luzinski, but they didn’t do it like Rice did. When Luzinski or Foster did it, it was sort of an anomaly for them. Rice came out of the gate hitting like that. Rice, in addition to batting .320 and hitting 39 HR, would get 200 hits as well. In fact he’s the only guy in history withe 3 straight seasons of 39 HR and 200 hits. He’s also the only guy in history to lead the majors in HR, RBI and triples in the same season. He was pretty unique as a hitter, and that’s why he stands out over other borderline HoFers.
It doesn’t hurt that he hung around just long enough to amass decent counting stats, i.e. he didn’t finish his career with fewer than 2000 hits like Albert Belle or Dick Allen.
And finally, he led the league in various offensive categories several times, and they were big ticket categories too, like HR, RBI and SLG. Many borderline HoFers, like Dwight Evans, didn’t lead the league as often.

By: Michael Q

Michael Q — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:43:41 +0000

“But, in general, Rice’s induction into the Hall of Fame seemed to do no harm to the greater population. More than that, it made quite a lot of people happy …”

Well put Joe. I missed Rice’s glory days by a couple years but it is wonderful to see how happy this is making so many of the old Sox fans and that really is the important thing about baseball, that these players accomplishments bring joy into ordinary people’s lives. Does it really matter that his OPS+ or something is slightly worse than someone who isn’t in the Hall?

I mean that’s not an argument to let David Eckstein in because it would make some folks happy. The stats do count for a lot but Jim Rice is close enough to being statistically good enough and was such a beloved player on top of that that I don’t think anyone should be griping about his inclusion.

By: Joe R

Joe R — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:36:01 +0000

That is still one of the greatest 1 year contracts of all time, no doubt.

Made the media love Dawson. They still do, unlike Tim Raines, who used coke a lot one year, which obviously makes him a terrible person and unfit for the Hall, unlike upstanding men like Ty Cobb was…