Rickey!
by Charlie on Jan 14, 2009 3:52 PM EST
20 comments
I generally stay out of discussions about Hall of Fame candidates because I just don't find those discussions that interesting, but don't interpret that as a lack of love for Rickey Henderson. Is there any player in the history of the game more fun to watch and more fun to listen to than Rickey Henderson?
No. No there is not.
Rickey at the age of 50 is still the Man of Steal, and if given the opportunity, he incredibly said he would lead the majors in stolen bases.
"I believe today, and people say I'm crazy, but if you gave me as many at-bats that you would give the runners out there today, I would out-steal every last one of them," Henderson said with typical bravado...
Henderson said he would love to play in the World Baseball Classic for Team USA. If Bernie Williams can come back, why not Rickey?
"What is [the WBC], wrestling?" Rickey said when asked if he would like to play in the WBC. Told it was the World Baseball Classic and games will be played in March, Rickey said, "Can I get in?"
Thanks to Primer.
0 recs |
20 comments
Email
Print
Comments
honestly
i’d rather see him than craig monroe in our outfield.
by johnnycuff on Jan 14, 2009 3:54 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
I’ll second this… of course, Rickey was my absolute favorite player when I was growing up… my first trip to Cooperstown will be for his induction ceremony…
by Captain Easychord on Jan 14, 2009 5:54 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Not many candidates, that's for sure.
The only one that jumps to my mind is Arlie Latham, and most people don’t remember him these days.
by Vlad on Jan 14, 2009 4:11 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Did you hear
that he said if someone let him play a full season next year, he’d steal more bases than Jose Reyes.
Gotta love the guy
by northsidenotch on Jan 14, 2009 6:16 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Comments on this post...
- Ricky Henderson flat out was one of my favorite players to watch.
- If Henderson played in WBC that would totally spike ratings. I’ve yet to hear of anyone who’s interested in seeing the classic.
- Yet another year Blyeven gets hosed from the Hall.
by Ketcham Bruce on Jan 14, 2009 6:41 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
I like the WBC
It’s a good opportunity to get a look at pros from other countries who haven’t come to MLB.
Of course, I liked Olympic baseball too, so my tastes may not be representative of the mainstream.
by Vlad on Jan 14, 2009 7:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Interesting side-by-side
Rickey’s career OPS+ was 127 and Rice’s 128, but Rickey’s best year was 188 and Rice’s was 157 (Rickey’s second-best season was 157, and his third was 155), and Rickey had 17 seasons of 112 or better while Rice had 12. Plus Rickey won a Gold Glove and Rice, of course, didn’t. Rickey was clearly the superior player, one of the seriously all-time greats.
I guess some would argue that this is why the Hall’s insane balloting procedure is designed the way it is, so true superstars like Rickey can go in on the first ballot and players like Rice have to wait 15 years. I’d argue that if there’s 15 years worth of difference, Rice shouldn’t be in there at all.
by bucdaddy on Jan 14, 2009 7:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Rice was a pretty good player.
But not, by any reasonable (on-field) standard, better than Brian Giles. And I don’t see anybody lining up to put Giles in the Hall when he retires.
by Vlad on Jan 14, 2009 11:10 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Like Charlie, I don't enjoy HOF debates, but I disagree quite a bit with that comp
I respect your opinion, but I think they’re two different batters. Giles was superior at getting on base, Rice a better slugger. I know I’m in the minority here, but Giles had an average glove a minus arm.
I wouldn’t mind if you responded to this question/comment Vlad, but how do you weight opinion between OPS+ and Similarity scores at bbref.com? Is one more meaningful to you, and why? Giles trumps Rice in OPS+, and for that matter so did Fred Lynn. But Rice has 5 HOFers among his similar batters, Giles and Lynn have none.
I never considered it before looking at it this way today, but in the name-association test, the players I mentioned fit my association/similar batter reaction. Rice? Star, borderline HOF. Giles/Lynn? Very Good players.
by azibuck on Jan 15, 2009 11:27 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Sim scores aren't park/league adjusted.
As such, they’re more of a fun tool than a useful predictor. A guy who hits in Coors is going to be credited as though his HR were just as valuable/difficult as those hit by a guy playing in Dodger Stadium in 1968.
Three of the guys on Rice’s list were voted into the Hall by the writers, but none of the three are particularly comparable to Rice once you account for park and era. Rice had a 128 OPS+ in 2089 career games, spending most of his career at positions with extremely low defensive value (about 3/4 as a bad-fielding LF, and 1/4 as a DH). Duke Snider was a strong defensive CF with a 140 OPS+. Not even slightly comparable. Willie Stargell wasn’t exactly a slick fielder, but his 147 OPS+ is even higher than Snider’s. He and Rice aren’t comparable either. Rice isn’t quite as far behind Billy Williams on rate stats (133 OPS+ to 128), but Williams has a big edge in playing time: about 400 extra games and 1,500 extra PA. As such, they aren’t all that comparable, either (Sim Scores uses AB instead of PA – not always a good proxy for career length), and Williams was seen as borderline by the writers, lasting six years on the ballot before being picked.
Among the four HOFers, Rice is most comparable to Orlando Cepeda (five points behind Cepeda in OPS+ in a slightly longer career), but Cepeda wasn’t picked by the writers. He topped out at around 60%, fell off the ballot after his fifteen years, and then was tabbed by the Veterans’ Committe, in a moderately controversial selection.
The guy on Rice’s Sim Score list who’s probably the closest overall comp is Ellis Burks. His career OPS+ is only two points off, his raw numbers are inflated by a favorable park/league, and he ended his career as a DH. It’s not a perfect match – Burks spent a lot of time as a CF, had a record of postseason success that Rice is lacking, and due to injuries came up a little short on PT, but in overall value they’re quite close. Burks isn’t eligible for the Hall yet, and probably won’t be chosen once he is. He might not even make the 5% threshold his first year.
It’s also worth noting that Giles gets screwed a little bit in your comparison. He had a higher, longer peak than Rice, but Sim Scores is all about career value, so it doesn’t do him much good. And he gets hit twice by the career value thing because he’s still an active, productive player, and will probably pile up counting stats for several more years, but of course Sim Scores doesn’t know that. And if you look at the OPS+s for his comps, he’s higher than all but one guy: Dick Allen, who’s probably the single best hitter NOT in the Hall, kept out by personality issues and a short career.
by Vlad on Jan 15, 2009 1:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I almost mentioned the age-similar scores
Because again, Rice matched the borderline HOF/star players, mostly Billy Williams and Dick Allen, and Giles matched the mostly “nice” players.
And points of order, I wasn’t comparing Rice or Giles to the actual players on their sim lists, just that they matched the “type” of player I think they were. And I know only three were BBWA-voted in, which almost defines “borderline.”
Strictly my opinion here, but Rice WAS Stargell, minus the late career “Pops” surge.
Re: OPS+, as stat I reference often, how does it square that Giles has been wildly above average, but Rice not? I mean, they both finished in the top 10 in OPS+ six times, but Giles scores are higher yet ranked lower? Is the league average player crappier now? Better then? I’ve never been able to reconcile that.
by azibuck on Jan 15, 2009 2:42 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Stargell's peak was much higher.
Rice’s best single-season OPS+ was a 157 in 1978, and he was only over 140 three other times (1977 – 147, 1979 – 154, and 1983 – 141). That’s a fairly shallow, narrow peak for a corner bat, comparable with contemporary guys like Ken Singleton (high 165, career 132) and George Foster (high 165, career 126). Stargell had seven years better than Rice’s best season, including a three-year run from 1971-1973 of 185, 163, and 186. The two guys aren’t even close.
Rice’s age-based sim scores also suffer from the lack of era adjustment. If you look at his top ten for age 30, and then sort them by OPS+, you get:
164 Allen
158 Mays
144 Snider
143 Murray
=
138 Cepeda
138 Canseco
136 Rice
134 Gonzalez
133 Williams
=
125 Green
123 Ennis
The guys who were of a comparable style AND a comparable value to Rice are, at best, borderline. The guys who were dominant hitters (Mays, Allen, etc.) only have similar counting stats because they were playing in bad park/league environments. In the cluster around Rice, you’ve got one guy who’s clearly out (Canseco), one guy who’s probably out (Gonzalez), one guy who got in on career length (Williams – the first line on his HOF plaque is about his consecutive-games streak), and one fringe guy who got in through the VC’s back door (Cepeda).
Giles’s age-based sim score comps are a pretty bizarre lot. He had an extremely late start as a regular, which greatly reduces the number of comparable bats, since most of the guys capable of hitting as well as he did were already up and accumulating counting stats. Thus, most of his comps at various ages are guys with serious injury problems (David Justice, J.D. Drew, Moises Alou, etc.) because injury is one of the only rational reasons to keep a guy with that kind of bat out of the lineup. He also misses out on most of the top post-WWII power bats because his BB rate was so high and his K rate was so low – Sim Scores are more about finding a player with a comparable style than a player with a comparable value, and the number of guys capable of putting up more than 70+ XBH and fewer than 70 K is very low.
“Re: OPS+, as stat I reference often, how does it square that Giles has been wildly above average, but Rice not? I mean, they both finished in the top 10 in OPS+ six times, but Giles scores are higher yet ranked lower?”
I’m not entirely sure that I understand what you’re asking, but if it’s what I think it is, you’re asking why Rice is leading his league with a 157 OPS+ in 1978, while Giles is finishing seventh in his league with the same number in 2000. As near as I can tell, it’s just a historical fluke, resulting from the way talent happened to be cycling at the time. Throughout baseball’s history, it’s extremely unusual to be able to lead the league in OPS+ with a figure as low as 150-something. The full list:
157 1978 AL [The Rice year.]
156 1984 AL
156 1983 NL
156 1965 AL
156 1911 NL
155 1984 NL
155 1976 AL
155 1956 NL
154 1950 AL
154 1926 NL
154 1916 NL
153 1918 NL
152 1986 NL
151 1963 AL
151 1919 AL
151 1959 AL
144 1945 AL
Rice just had the good fortune to peak at a time when there weren’t many truly elite hitters to compete with. Whereas Giles was going up against a very tough peer group, headed by one of the top two or three hitters of all time, Mr. Bonds. Simple as that. There isn’t a generalized trend across the length of baseball or anything like that – you had guys like Dan Brouthers putting up league-leading 190s in the 1880s, and you have guys like Frank Thomas putting up league-leading 190s in the 1990s.
by Vlad on Jan 15, 2009 4:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Vlad
I’m sure I’m not the first to put forward this idea, but I think that Jim Rice benefited from people questioning the numbers of a lot of the PED sluggers of recent years, like McGwire, Bonds and Sosa, and Rice ended up getting some sort of an “atta boy” for doing it in a so-called steroid-free era. (I guess the NFL players of the time used up the entire steroid supply each year. There couldn’t have been any steroid abuse in MLB during Rice’s career.)
By voting Jim Rice into Cooperstown, it makes me question why Dave Parker is not in there. Of course his own substance abuse problems derailed his candidacy, but he was a better all-around player than Jim Rice.
by patthatt on Jan 15, 2009 10:05 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
Steroids
If sportswriters think that guys weren’t using steroids in the ‘70s and ’80s, then they’re either stupid or willfully ignorant. Steroid use was widespread in other pro sports at the time. Tom House has said that “six or seven” guys on every pitching staff in the ’70s were at least experimenting with steroids or HGH. Pete Rose spent the last years of his career rooming with a convicted steroid dealer.
The game hasn’t been “clean” for a long time now, and guys like Rice are no more or less deserving of the benefit of the doubt than modern sluggers.
by Vlad on Jan 15, 2009 10:14 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
I wouldn't doubt it
Especially in the 80s. But there was a time when weight-training was strictly taboo for baseball players. The old-school thought that it would make a player musclebound and “tight”. Do you know of a year or short span of years when that thinking was reversed? I doubt it was the 70’s, except perhaps for a few rogue workout warriors. But then again, by 1990 I’d guess most people were on board with weights, or very soon to be. I suppose 1970-1990 is a sufficient peg of the transformation, but I’d also guess that some early experimenters were hoping for a magic bullet, and just trying the dope without proper training to go with it.
by azibuck on Jan 15, 2009 11:33 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
There WAS a time when weight training was taboo for players.
The 1890s, to be specific. Honus Wagner lifted weights, and it’s been gradually more and more accepted ever since. There have always been scouts who were concerned about players becoming musclebound, but there have also always been players who didn’t give a shit about what the scouts thought.
I read a thing on NPR about Hall of Fame deadball pitcher “Pud” Galvin, and how he endorsed a “nerve tonic” that was basically a testosterone supplement, derived from (I am SO not making this up!) monkey glands. I doubt he was the only one.
by Vlad on Jan 15, 2009 1:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
azibuck
When the Clemens HGH fiasco came out, I thought about Nolan Ryan and his performance in his 40s, and wondered if he was using something in the late ‘80s and early ’90s. I asked Dejan about this in a mail, but he didn’t volunteer an opinion.
I don’t know about widespread steroid use in the ‘70s in MLB like you, but I’m convinced there were many guys doing it from the early-to-mid ‘80s. Some scattered recollections include Sparky Anderson freakin’ out when he saw Kirk Gibson show up at spring training one year looking like the Incredible Hulk(just weights?), and Tim Raines suddenly showing a major transformation in physique and power. When accused of corking his bat, Raines replied with something to the effect that he corked his forearms instead. And then, of course, we saw Canseco, McGwire et al. on center stage a couple years later….
Maybe Jim Rice never used steroids. But it’s not outside the realm of imagination, either.
by patthatt on Jan 15, 2009 1:07 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
It is widely known
Ryan is an Advil user.
by bucdaddy on Jan 15, 2009 9:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Certain photos copyright © 2009 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
