Hall of Fame: Rickey Yay, Rice Nay

Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were inducted into the Hall of Fame yesterday. At least one of them was deserving. It's been said by Bill James that if you cut Rickey's career in half you would have 2 worthy Hall of Famers. Judging by the graph over at Beyond the Box Score, they seem to confirm that:


According to Sean Smith's historical Wins Above Replacement database, Rickey Henderson has 113.1 WAR. If we cut that in half to 56.5 Rickey still has a higher WAR than current Hall of Famers like Joe Medwick, Lou Boudreau, Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon, Enos Slaughter, Tony Perez, Luis Aparicio, and well you get the point.

What about the totals of his other stats? Rickey got on base 5,343 times, 4th most of all time. If we halve that we get about 2,672. Well, that's about the same as Bill Dickey, and more than other Hall of Famers like Lou Boudreau, Hank Greenberg, and Mickey Cochcrane. Rickey also stole a lot of bases, and we mean a lot, 1,406 to be exact. That's 468 more than 2nd highest Lou Brock and 468 steals would place Rickey 42nd all time! That's more than leadoff/sb threats Craig Biggio, Juan Pierre, Marquis Grissom, and Chuck Knoblauch. Just the difference between Rickey and the 2nd best in terms of steals, makes him one of the best stolen base threats of all time. Rickey also walked 2190 times, if we half that it's laughable how many more that is than current Hall of Famers that it's not even worth mentioning.

Except maybe one, Jim Rice. One half of Rickey's career would give him 1,095 walks, Jim Rice walked 670 times and over 10% of those were because he was "the most feared hitter (in an arbitrary period of time)" via the intentional walk. You don't have to get walks to be a great player or even a Hall of Famer, and Rice was a great player just great players shouldn't get into the Hall of Fame. Rice's tOPS+ (which is the "OPS+ of this split relative to the player or team's overall OPS") at home in his career is 115, away it's 85. Certainly you can expect players performances to be better at home than away, but that is a startling difference, Fenway Park really inflates your stats.

Jime Rice's career was cut short and he only played until he was 36. I have heard people say that it makes his career even more impressive, but the Hall of Fame doesn't or shouldn't make exceptions for players who had their careers end when they are 36 rather than 42. It's not like Jim Rice missed 3 years of his prime fighting in WWII. Also, when you say his career was cut short it magnifies the double plays that Rice grounded into. Jim Rice is 6th all time in GIDP and the 5 players above him have over 4000 more Plate Appearances than Rice. It's safe to say Rice would have one of the worst PA/GIDP ratio's of all times if not the worst. Simply put, Rice made a shitton of outs considering how his career was cut short and how he's considered a HOF'er.

Rice did a lot of things, he has over 2,400 hits almost 1,500 RBI, he's won an MVP, and for a while he was one of the better hitters in the league. That is all fine and dandy, but it's not Hall of Fame worthy when you look at the big picture (the park he played in, and the outs he created, and his lack of defense). Ricky on the other hand is one of the best players to ever play this game. Well, so many players have played that you could put Jim Rice in that category too, but Rickey is one of the best players to play the game that's in the Hall of Fame, he's that good. Jim Rice was done at 36 and it's arguable if he's worthy of induction, if Rickey Henderson retired at 33 he'd have a better career than Rice and still be worthy of the Hall of Fame. Some player.