Score One for Raines

Looks like Tim Raines just gained an additional vote for the Hall (and you can read about his case here). Two points I don't understand though. First, in discussing the qualifications of Jim Rice no mention is made of his park context which figured greatly into his peak numbers from 1975 through 1986. In fact, when you look at OPS Normalized by league and park (which is a good proxy for overall production) for players with over 1,000 plate appearances in the same period Rice ranks 28th on the list behind lots of guys who are clearly not hall of famers (he ranks 7th when not taking park into account).

Rank    Name                  G      PA     OPS NOPS/PF
1       Mike Schmidt       1800    7657     931     131
2       Pedro Guerrero      825    3213     889     129
3       Don Mattingly       572    2449     913     126
4       Reggie Smith        830    3188     884     126
5       D. Strawberry       516    2107     863     125
6       George Brett       1595    6952     901     124
7       Willie Stargell     731    2547     873     123
8       Eddie Murray       1499    6415     879     122
9       Gene Tenace        1036    3642     831     122
10      Dave Winfield      1763    7482     841     121
11      Jack Clark         1235    5111     839     121
12      George Foster      1637    6763     838     120
13      Keith Hernandez    1707    7063     837     120
14      Oscar Gamble       1058    3404     852     120
15      Wade Boggs          725    3243     897     120
16      Bob Watson         1079    3993     825     119
17      Dave Parker        1652    6939     846     119
18      Greg Luzinski      1389    5766     855     119
19      Joe Morgan         1303    5390     829     119
20      Tim Raines          876    3888     823     119
21      Bob Horner          960    3966     846     118
22      Dale Murphy        1360    5689     847     118
23      Glenn Davis         276    1112     815     118
24      Ken Phelps          371    1121     865     118
25      Ken Singleton      1446    6071     834     118
26      Larry Hisle         597    2487     839     118
27      Fred Lynn          1522    6373     864     117
28      Jim Rice           1766    7754     875     117
29      Jose Cruz          1744    7043     793     117
30      Reggie Jackson     1631    6655     841     117
31      Rod Carew          1440    6219     838     117
32      Chris Brown         270    1040     788     116
33      Gary Carter        1680    6871     806     116
34      Leon Durham         862    3415     835     116
35      Rick Monday         918    2973     813     116
36      Rickey Henderso    1087    4843     828     116
37      Ron Cey            1704    6901     811     116
38      Tony Gwynn          612    2590     804     116
39      Bill Madlock       1549    6333     807     115
40      Andre Dawson       1443    6138     801     115
41      Cal Ripken          830    3562     833     115
42      Johnny Bench       1064    4082     811     115
43      Kirk Gibson         765    3104     831     115
44      Al Oliver          1496    6123     805     114
45      Alvin Davis         442    1917     838     114
46      Bobby Bonds         835    3480     811     114
47      Mike Marshall       575    2122     783     114
48      Rico Carty          674    2690     810     114
49      Bobby Grich        1516    6146     801     113
50      Andre Thornton     1405    5797     821     113

Second, there was this nugget from Peter Gammons:

Raines, Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs were the best of the '80s and early '90s, and while some of our sabermetric fellows do not believe players are humans, Raines made every team he was on better, not just because he was such a good player, but because his effervescent personality made teammates relax and play better; you'd go out to the cage and players would all be following him around.

Why go to the trouble to paint sabermetric analysts and hence analysis in that negative light? That's the second time Gammons has done this recently. What gives?

Also saw this from Tracy Ringolsby in an otherwise good interview about the BBWAA:

Rich: Speaking of which, who are you voting for this year?

Tracy: Alphabetically, Bert Blyleven, Dave Concepcion, Rich Gossage, Jack Morris, Lee Smith and Alan Trammell. The biggest debates for me were Tim Raines, who obviously was overshadowed by Rickey Henderson, but also if you take Vince Coleman's five top years, I would say he outperformed Raines, too, and I don't see Coleman as a Hall of Famer.

Really? As the comments to the post note there is really no comparison between Raines and Coleman. If you want to compare just baserunning then Coleman had three stellar seasons in 1985-1987 that netted him over ten runs per season on the bases but Raines had five such seasons spread out over a longer period of time (1982-1992) and topped +7 runs three more times. In a previous post Chone asks me to post the career numbers for Raines, which I will do either here or on Baseball Prospectus.