Bernstein: The Baseball Hall Of Fame's 'Jim Rice Problem'
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) The 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was released Monday, and the 34-name list is again rife with reasonable cases to be made, featuring a total of 13 position players with at least an argument for enshrinement based on the information at hand.
We'll table the discussion of pitchers for the time being to examine a particular issue the Hall created for itself when it lowered the accepted threshold for modern position players so notably in 2009, opening up such cases to be made. It's a theoretical exercise more than anything else, presented with the full awareness that voters will likely continue to hew to established patterns.
As a caveat, we're dismissing any issue of proven or suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs for the purposes of this discussion. The Hall already features some certain to be guilty of that. It's mostly pointless moralism over a museum in upstate New York that's unaffiliated with MLB and not bound by its rules, judged often on hearsay and slippery innuendo. And it's a criterion we aren't going to apply.
This year's list features the second-best player of all time in Barry Bonds, whose 164.4 Wins Above Replacement, per Fangraphs.com, is a mere four behind that of Babe Ruth and a full 14.5 ahead of the next-best player in history, Willie Mays.
Next is Jeff Bagwell at 80.2 fWAR and expected to make it this time around.
Ivan Rodriguez is ranked third in career fWAR at 68.9, also the third-best catcher of all time by that metric behind only Johnny Bench and Gary Carter -- and ahead of Carlton Fisk and Yogi Berra.
Outfielder Larry Walker is at 68.7, though his production is considered enhanced by many due to favorable hitting conditions at Coors Field. Still, his top-10 statistical comparisons at BaseballReference.com contain four Hall of Famers, including Joe DiMaggio at No. 6.
Then it's another popular choice for election in his last year on the ballot, Tim Raines, at 66.4.
Manny Ramirez is newly eligible at 66.3, followed by the curious case of Edgar Martinez at 65.5. Martinez is one of the great hitters of his era but has faced the headwinds of being a primary DH, playing in an era of outsized offensive numbers and toiling off the national media radar in Seattle.
Gary Sheffield's 62.1 fWAR ranks eighth, and the nine-time All-Star's 10 stat-comps feature eight Hall of Fame players — guys like Mel Ott, Reggie Jackson, Ken Griffey, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson and Frank Thomas, which is to say, good company.
Then it's Sammy Sosa at 60.1 and Fred McGriff at 56.9, followed by Jeff Kent at 56.1 and Vladimir Guerrero at 54.3.
And here we are at Jim Rice.
Rice joined the Hall in '09 despite a career value of just 50.8 fWAR, riding a surge of East Coast voter sentiment and a memorable peak value in his three best years in the late 1970s. He couldn't field or run the bases and was all but worthless after turning 33. He's not the worst modern Hall of Famer (with that distinction likely belonging to Lou Brock and his 43.2 fWAR, 167 errors and the lowest fielding percentage of any qualified left fielder ever, in because he accrued enough of two of the counting stats, even if we now know better about how to value total hits and steals), but his presence means others now can point to him.
If you have been counting names, you'll notice we have still accounted for just 12 on this year's ballot. Eligible player No. 13 has 50.7 fWAR, just one-tenth of a win less than Rice. He had considerably more value as a defender and base-runner, boasting eight different 4-win seasons to Rice's six.
He's Mike Cameron, nobody's idea of a Hall of Famer and merely the latest illustration of a Jim Rice problem that isn't going away.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
