I was born in 1979, in Boston, to a father who loves baseball. I attended my first game at Fenway Park when I was only two months old. My first real sports memory is Bill Buckner's ground ball. In the sports mythology of my brain, Jim Rice is a titanic figure.
This year he will either enter the hall of fame, or miss by the slightest of margins, in his final year of BWAA eligibiligy. But does he belong? Is he truly one of the greats, or a player remembered more fondly then his ability and talent would demand?
Consider some of his peers on the Red Sox of the 1970's and 80's. Carl Yaztremski, Dwight Evans, and Fred Lynn. All good players, but only one of those three is in the Hall of Fame. Of the four, the offensive contributions are remarkably similar. Look at their OPS+. This statistic adds on base percentage, slugging percentage, and then compares the total to the league average. So an OPS+ of 100 means for a given player in a given year means that player is exactly the league average in on base percentage plus slugging percentage, while 120 means the player for that year is 20% better then the league average.
Jim Rice had a career OPS+ of 128, Fred Lynn 129, Dwight Evans 127, and Yaz 120. OPS correlates very well with runs scored, and thus is a good off the cuff measure of total offensive value. Its not perfect, but its very good. So, of these four players, Lynn, Rice, and Evans are all about the same value offensively in this first off the cuff measure. Yaz falls behind in this comparison.
So, lets refine this a little bit. On base percentage correlates better to runs scored then slugging percentage. When we add OBP to SLG, we skew our comparison towards players who get a lot of extra base hits, and away from players who get on base a lot, relative to their actual offensive value. In other words, take player A with an OBP of .350, and SLG of .500, and Player B with an OBP of .400, and an SLG of .450. OPS will tell you they have equal value, but in reality, player B's rate statistics generate more runs for a team.
Jim Rice had a .352 OBP, Lynn .360, and Evans .370. Of those three players, Rice's OPS+ is skewed positively compared to his true offensive value in comparison to Lynn and Evans, meaning that in their average seasons, Lynn and Evans contributed more offensive production then Jim Rice did.
We're still off the cuff here, so lets look at speed and base running. None of these three players moved well on the bases, but Rice grounded into, on average, 10 more double plays per 162 games than Evans, and 12 more then Lynn. This means that in addition to all the outs each of these players made on their own, Rice made outs much more frequently then Evans or Lynn by eliminating people already on base. Not what you want from an offensive player.
An argument in favor of Jim Rice often advanced is that he was “The most feared hitter in the american league for 12 years.” A comment generally to remind us of his fearsome power numbers, his ability to hit home runs, triples, and doubles. One way to measure how feared a hitter is might be to look at his intentional walks. How often did pitchers avoid the hitter in order to face another, lesser, hitter? Over his career, Rice had 6 intentional walks for every 162 games he played. So did Fred Lynn. Dwight Evans had 4. Jim Rice was the 5th most intentionally walked hitter in the American League once, 9th once, and 10th once. In none of his other 13 seasons was he in the top 10. Maybe Rice wasn't feared that much after all?
Look at the Red Sox team from 1975-1986, when Rice was at the top of his game. During those seasons, Jim Rice was the best hitter on his own team once, and the second best four times. In the other 7 seasons, he was third or worse. Shouldn't a dominant, feared hitter at least be the best hitter on his team regularly? Rice wasn't even in the top two on his team more then half the time.
Ok, maybe Jim Rice was a dominant hitter for a few years, and was feared based on what he did in the early part of his career? His OPS+ in his first 5 full seasons were 120, 127, 147, 157, 154. Those last three years are his best offensive years for his 16 year career. So how do they stack up as great seasons? Lets compare to a later Red Sox left fielder, Mike Greenwell... no one's version of a dominant hitter, much less a hall of famer. His first 5 full seasons, he had an OPS+ of 112, 147, 159, 123, 119. Certainly not Jim Rice... but on the other hand, he really only misses by having two seasons of extremely high OPS+ in his first five, compared to 3 for Jim Rice. His best season was better then Jim Rice's, offensively.
Jim Rice was, by all accounts, a mediocre Left Fielder, defensively. And his range factor backs it up. Range Factor counts how many balls a player gets to per game. During his career, Rice got to 2.15 balls per game, compared to the league average at his position of 2.45. Maybe Mediocre is overrating his defensive abilities? Compare to Lynn: 2.79 compared to a league average of 2.89. Evans, 2.23 compared to 2.19. Both Evans and Lynn were in harder defensive spots then Rice, so their defense is intrinsically more valuable then Rice's to begin with, and both performed better in the outfield. Range Factor is a very rough metric, and better metrics show Rice faring even worse in comparison to Lynn and Evans.
If Jim Rice was a Hall of Fame player, then so were Fred Lynn, and Dwight Evans. And no one is making thae argument that they are, for good reason. How did I pick those two players to compare Jim Rice to? They were the other 2/3 of the Red Sox outfield for much of his career, and certainly during the best part of it. Rice was the worst of the the three Red Sox outfielders of the late 70's and early 80's. He shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame.
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