Rice A Wrongee

Anyone who saw Jim Rice rake in those wacky '70s can understand why his HOF candidacy, to date unsuccessful, arouses such bewildered passion. He was a memorable hitter who smacked the ball awfully hard and parlayed eye popping single season numbers into an impressive career.

Most impressive was his strength. He once broke a bat on a check swing that missed the ball and his blistering golf drives led to an assortment of apocryphal yarns. Besides anecdotes, Rice was a Top 5 MVP vote getter six times, and won the award in 1978, when he became the first ALer since 1937 to collect 400 total bases in a season. Eight all star teams. Three home run titles. Altogether first rung Cooperstown credentials. To this day, some of my generation insist that Jim Rice was the greatest hitter they ever saw - and unlike some other recent HOF wannabes ( Blyleven, Lee Smith, Molitor, Sutter and Gossage), broadcasters gushed from early on in Jim's career about his likely induction.

It's from these lofty origins that folks today are flummoxed by the BBWAA's apparent disrespect for Rice, and blame his twisting in the Lake Otsego wind more on writers' retribution for Jim's abrupt demeanor than on much substantitive evaluation of his performance. The inductions of cheerful backslappers like Tony Perez and Kirby Puckett help fuel this theory, and it may be true to some degree - but it's also impossible to prove or refute, so instead let's render the alleged conspiracy moot.

Rice stopped being an effective player after 33. No shame in that, but it truncates one of the strands by which many voters deem HOF worthiness: career stats. Rice hit 382 dingers as HOFers Murray, Schmidt and Reggie surpassed 500 - and Winfield hit 465. Other contemporaries not in the Hall, each with more homers than Jim, include Nettles, Kingman, Dale Murphy, Galarraga, Dawson, Baines, Joe Carter, Darrell Evans and Dwight Evans. They werent all better players than Rice, but fair or not, his #52 ranking on the all time HR list ( tied with Frank Howard, pictured, who is also not in the HOF), doesnt exactly scream "one of the greatest sluggers of his generation".

Secondly, a baseball revolution took hold as Rice was winding down his career. Despite less savory, concurrent efforts by Jose Canseco, this revolution didnt enhance performance as much as measure it in more meaningful ways, and perhaps no player's legacy was more threatened by its advent than Jim Edward Rice. The revolution was sabermetrics, which reached beyond anecdotes, myth and convention, and illuminated Rice's career in the harsh light of his contextual advantages.

You're likely familiar with components of this argument; the fact he didnt walk much and had a middling OBP(.352) - or that he GIDP more often(per PA) than any established player in history. Those shortcomings, however, dont prevent him from being a HOF lock. The revelatory bombshell that justified Rice's "snub" was the quantification of park effects.

Jim Rice played half his games in Fenway Park, which provided an enormous statistical advantage to Red Sox hitters in the days before newer, smaller parks were constructed. How enormous? In Rice's prime(1975-79), Fenway runs were almost 20% over the AL league average, which itself was rising thanks to the DH. It was a fortuitous time and place to be batting third at Fenway, amidst Boston's DH powered lineups. To be sure, Rice was a vital cog in the Sox success, but he wasnt this superlative driving force, this mythic colossus some insist on perpetuating. Snip 9 or 10% off Rice's seasonal marks (for park adjustment), and it reveals an excellent, durable player - five 100 RBI seasons instead of eight, possibly one 200 hit campaign. Instead of his actual AVE/OBP/SLG/ OPS of:

.298 .352 .502 = .854 OPS,

in a neutral park you get something close to

.277 .330 .459 = .789 OPS,

which are his precise lifetime stats away from Fenway. Compare this with the road OPS of 70s stars like George Foster(.812), Hal McRae(.786) or Fred Lynn(.780) & Dwight Evans(.798). Fine players, but none in the Hall. Is it a stretch to see that, after one incorporates defense and intangibles, that Jim Rice was - at least arguably -the third best outfielder on those good Red Sox teams.

During all of Rice's years in Beantown, he led the league in OPS once, in 1978. During the same sixteen years, on the same Fenway grass, Dewey Evans led the league twice in OPS, and in shorter Fenway stints, Fred Lynn led the league twice in OPS and power-poor Wade Boggs led the league twice in OPS . Forget about the league, Jim Rice only led his team in OPS twice, while those "other guys" led the Sox fourteen times. Hall of famer Boggs won five batting titles, reaching base more than 300 times a year for seven straight years, setting Jim Rice's table. Lynn won a title - so did Carney Lansford. Rice hit for some nice inflated averages, but never won a batting championship.

None of this proves Rice wasnt a terrific player and that's not the intent - he was indeed a very good, consistent hitter. It does suggest, however, that a) he was playing under historically favorable, run-rich conditions and b) he was not nearly as dominant as observers, then and now, locked into superficial, non contextual BA/HR/RBI valuations, would have you believe.

That era, as others, is full of less remembered players better than Jim Rice. Bobby Grich (.792 career road OPS) won four Gold Gloves at second base, Will Clark(.854 road) - heck, Jack Clark(.857 road) was a better hitter and comparable player to Jim Rice. Darryl Strawberry, whose career was a bit short for Cooperstown, was a much better hitter than Jim Rice. And there were plenty of others. No less an authority than Bill James records that even mildly regarded Yankee LF Roy White had similar career value and, get this, higher peak value (after park and era adjustments) than his ballyhooed Boston counterpart! That's hard to absorb for many and the point isnt really whether you believe James or not, but rather to more broadly consider the context, the value of Rice's gaudy stats, and to ask whether the early adulation is consistent with subsequent scrutiny.

In terms of MVP shares, Rice absolutely warrants induction, however MVP voters ( many of whom tabbed Jeff Burroughs MVP in 1974, for example) were not as informed as we are today regarding player value. It's not a travesty if Rice gets inducted - lesser selections are made every decade, particularly by the Veterans Committee - but in time his will be seen more and more as a flawed selection. The uncomfortable question Rice poses is this: Should we accept a candidate's contemporary legacy more or less as is, or reinterpret it as new information becomes available - even when it conflicts with the game's rich lore and our cherished memories?