Hall Of Fame

So Jim Rice and Ricky Henderson are now in the Hall of Fame. Everyone agrees that Ricky deserves no question there. Everyone who writes via blog seems to think Rice doesn't deserve, and everyone who writes via published sources seems to think Rice does deserve. I'm not sure what to think of that other than, I'm a blog and I don't think Rice deserves, so I'm not really going against the curve there.

It was wishful thinking but I would have liked to have seen Rock Raines get in, or at least get more than the 22.6% that he got. In Rice's first year of eligibility in 1995 he got 29.8%, and his last year in 2009 he got 76.4%. That's a steady rise that maybe Raines can expect. Except for the fact that Raines got 24.3% last year, so this decline, albeit pretty small, obviously isn't a good sign.

I'd like to think that as we inch further away from the steroid years of approximately 1986-2005, that we'll start to appreciate the non possibly juiced home run players more, players like Raines or Trammel. So far that's not the case. How is it that some of these writers shy away from advanced and not so advanced stats like OBP, yet don't care about old school measures like stealing bases and defense? I guess even those are too annoying so they just go straight to RBI and vote for Rice, who has 12 more than Luis Gonzalez.

It comes down to a simple number for me, Rice has a career OPS+ of 128, Raines 123. Rice was a middle of the order hitter who writers like to say injected fear into the pitcher, Raines was on of the best leadoff hitters ever, yet their hitting output is vitrually the same.