I'm going to play a game with you folks, so bear with me for a bit. Here are the career statistics for an exceptionally good outfielder, whose name I will withhold for now to keep you from forming any opinions before you read. Examine them and decide whether he should be in the Hall of Fame:
2143 games, 8451 at-bats, 1404 runs, 2682 hits, 417 doubles, 87 triples, 426 home runs, 1519 RBI, 847 walks, .317 batting average, .379 on-base percentage, .539 slugging percentage, .918 OPS. Just to be sure we're clear, these numbers have been adjusted to account for the era in which he played, his home ballparks, and other factors that level the playing field a bit so he can be compared fairly to those players already in the Hall. He was an 8-time All-Star, an MVP and his total of 50 MVP Points (derived from points awarded for different finishes in MVP voting) is tied with Reggie Jackson for the 20th-highest total in the history of the award. Every eligible player with more points than him is already in the Hall of Fame. More than 100 Hall of Famers rank behind him.
Let me add that this player was an above average fielder too. He never won any Gold Gloves, but he was exceptionally good at throwing out runners and posted a career total of 71 Fielding Runs as calculated by Total Baseball. That total is better than 46 of the 57 current Hall of Fame outfielders and is also figured with the various eras of baseball taken into account.
Now, just to be sure you're hooked, I'll throw in the fact that he was described by one Hall of Fame teammate as the ultimate gamer. "I've played with that man for a lot of years and he goes to the post" was the exact quote. One of his managers said of him "I cannot get him out of the lineup" because he insisted on playing even when he was hurt. He was a clean-living man who is still married to his high school sweetheart and once said "I don't believe in luck; I believe in God's will. God is controlling my destiny. If He wants me to win MVP awards and play in World Series, then I will. I took (an injury) as a sign from God to work even harder." He volunteers to speak to children's groups, a recreation center for under-privileged kids is named for him in his home town, he's active in the Reviving Baseball in the Inner City program, and he was once cited for heroism for saving a little boy's life.
Now, it's possible you hold players to incredibly high standards before casting your imaginary Hall of Fame ballots for them. If so, I applaud you. But if you're like most of us, I think you're probably looking at the facts above and thinking, "Yup, that's the kind of player I want in the Hall of Fame." Still, I want you to be sure, so let me explain the one area that I altered in the facts presented above.
The career hitting statistics I listed are modified. They are not the actual numbers this guy posted. I've modified them to take four things into account.
First, this player missed a significant portion of one season due to a labor strike. He was just 28 years old at the time, in the prime of his career, and played every one of his team's other games that season. So I added 54 games onto his actual totals along with the numbers he would have posted in those games based upon his pace from the rest of that season. Now, some of you may quibble at that and I don't necessarily blame you. In reality, he didn't play those games. But, if we're going to compare him to the other outfielders in the Hall of Fame, we have to account for this lost time in order to be fair. The vast majority of those players didn't play during the period when labor issues could wipe out large portions of the season. True, some did miss time due to military service, but we've all seen projections of Ted Williams' numbers or Joe DiMaggio's with their war years added back in. It's only fair to do so here as well, not to re-write the record book but to make a fair comparison.
The most obvious modification that had to be made was an accounting of the various run-scoring eras. This player's career spanned a period when each team averaged 4.406 runs per game. The average for Hall of Fame outfielders was 4.647, a 5.19% difference. Beyond that, the average for Hall of Fame left fielders - this player's position - was 4.719, a 6.64% difference. We really can't compare this player fairly to the group of Hall of Famers at his position unless we inflate his numbers to account for this difference in run scoring. I've done that by simply adding 6.64% to his actual totals. So, for instance, if he had scored 1,000 runs in his career, the adjustment would bring his new total to 1,066. I did that for all of the "counting" offensive statistics, with the obvious exception of games played and at-bats since raising his at-bats by the same percentage would leave his averages unchanged. Again, some quibbling could take place here because I used the higher difference for left fielders instead of the lower one for all Hall of Fame outfielders, but the fact is that was his position. I don't see why he should be compared to right and center fielders when he rarely played there.
I also took into account the fact that this player's home ballpark favored hitters. Games played in his home park produced 13.04% more runs than the games his team played on the road. Now, I could have deflated all of his numbers by that 13.04%, but that wouldn't have been fair. After all, every other player in the Hall derived some kind of home field advantage. It's a known fact that even in pitcher's parks, the home team's hitters aren't hurt as badly as the visitors, while in hitter's parks the home team is invariably helped more than their opponents. For instance, the 13.04% average boost from this player's home park was derived from a 17.71% jump in the home team's scoring and just 8.18% jump for the visitors.
That tells me that the home team had other factors in its favor besides just the dimensions of the ballpark. Home cooking, friendly fans, the presence of family, all those things help. On top of that, it's only fair to give the team credit for tailoring their roster to the ballpark they play in. After all, why wouldn't a team try to draft or sign players whose swings fit their new surroundings? That's just smart management, though it can be taken too far and actually hurt that team on the road. In fact, there's evidence that that's exactly what happened to this player's team. An argument could be made that this player's home field advantage was offset by the disadvantage he faced on the road.
Here's what I decided to do. First, I decreased this player's home numbers by 8.18%, the amount of increase his opponents received from playing in his home park. That takes the ballpark factor into account while still allowing him some home field advantage. Next, I altered all of his road statistics to account for the park factors of the other stadiums across the league. If one park hurt visiting teams by 1.72% then I increased this player's numbers in that stadium by that amount. If a park helped visiting teams score 4.33% more runs, then I decreased his numbers in that stadium by that amount. I should state now that I did not have home/road splits for the first four years of this player's career. I derived them by taking the average home/road split from the rest of his career and applying those percentages to his season totals from each of those missing seasons.
After all of these calculations were done I threw in one more, one that is normally overlooked. We all know that right-handed hitters have an advantage against left-handed pitchers and vice versa. If this wasn't true, platooning would never have been invented. What isn't discussed often is that this places right-handed hitters at a disadvantage when compared to lefty hitters. Only about 30% of the pitchers in baseball are left-handed, meaning that right-handed hitters are only at a hitting advantage in 30% of their plate appearances while lefties are at an advantage 70% of the time. That holds true for the player discussed here, a righty who faced left-handed pitching in just 27.3% of his plate appearances.
Don't think that this doesn't matter when the Hall of Fame is concerned. Of the 57 outfielders in the Hall, just 21 were pure right-handed hitters. That's less than 37%, despite the fact that about 85% of the population is right-handed and about 55% of all baseball players hit exclusively from the right side.
Obviously, being a righty is a disadvantage in baseball. To adjust for this, I reversed this player's percentages against righties and lefties, giving him 72.7% of his plate appearances against lefties and 27.3% against righties. When those are extrapolated out across his 9,200-plate appearance career, it makes a significant difference.
Now, I hope you can see that I made all of these adjustments in an attempt to be fair. I truly believe that this player's actual career totals cannot be compared to the average Hall of Famer without taking these factors into account. With the exception of his home ballpark, this player's numbers were depressed by a number of factors, and it's only fair that we account for that.
With all of this done, it should be noted that this player exceeded the average of Hall of Fame left fielders in plate appearances, hits, home runs, extra-base hits, RBI, batting average, slugging percentage and OPS. He compiled more top-10 MVP finishes and as many All-Star selections. Remember, this is in comparison to a group that includes, Carl Yastrzemski, Ted Williams, Billy Williams, Al Simmons, Willie Stargell, Stan Musial, Lou Brock, Goose Goslin and Zack Wheat. It's not a bunch of chumps.
In the name of fairness, let me also point out that this player was described almost universally as being surly to reporters. At least one teammate has called him self-centered. A noted baseball analyst has labeled him "overrated". His career was over at 36 and he hit into a lot of double plays. Now, I could get into the mitigating circumstances for each of these things, like the fact that he was a private person who tried to shun the spotlight and that the teammate in question was an admitted pot head, but they're really ancillary to this entire discussion. The fact is, this player's critics have never been presented with his actual contributions as a player with all field-leveling modifications taken into account. They've never been presented with his Fielding Runs totals or his teammates' and coaches' accolades for being a hard working gamer. They have ignored his off-field contributions to many children's causes and his citation for heroism in saving a child's life. All-told, when compared to the womanizing, racist, ego-centric lot that makes up too large a percentage of the membership of the Hall of Fame, this player's inclusion in that group would raise the overall bar. Would he be in the pantheon with Ruth, Mays and Cobb? No. But he would be an above average Hall of Famer.
In case you haven't already figured it out, the player in question is Jim Rice. A bit surprising, isn't it?
» You can read more of Paul's work at www.lostinleftfield.com.
Also by Paul White
» Good Manners and Poor Logic: Brock Was No Gwynn
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: The Also Rans
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Two Right Fielders
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #5, Rich Gossage
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot - The Starters I Left Behind
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #4, Jim Rice
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Trammell & Smith
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #1, Gary Carter
» Happy Birthday Bob Elliott
» 3,000 Hits That Don't Belong in Cooperstown
» Frankie Frisch's Sad Legacy: The Cheapening of The Hall of Fame
» Babe's MVP Snubs
» The Schalk-Schang Redemption: Two Men Who Prove That The Hall of Fame Veterans Committee Was a Sham
» Being Tony Muser
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Paul White. Posted February 26, 2002.
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