Probably the hottest debate surrounding the Hall of Fame selection this year is the electability of Jim Rice. I will present the fact to you off data I gleemed off of www.baseball-reference.com.
First the positives. According to Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, Rice is 89th all time just ahead of Duke Snider and behind Gary Sheffield. The most similar players listed on the site stats wise who are in the Hall of Fame are Orlando Cepeda, Duke Snider, Billy Williams, and Willie Stargell. Rice is 29th in career MVP voting credited with 3.15 shares winning the 1978 MVP. His career batting average of .298 is the same as Mickey Mantle and Barry Bonds. He has more career total bases than Joe Dimaggio.
Now the negatives. It would be inaccurate to label him as primarily a DH as he played 1503 of 2089 career games in the outfield. But it would be accurate to label him as a fielder with poor range even though he played half his games in Fenway Park with its miniscule left field. His range factor was 1.84 in a league where the average was about 2.16 plays a game. He was a poor postseason hitter with a career average of .225 in 3 series. His .352 on base percentage is the same as Rafael Furcal. He was painfully slow as he got older and finished 6th all time in grounding into double plays.
The I don't knows. He has 295 Adjusted Batting Runs in his career, more than Harold Baines, less than Jose Canseco. He was on 2 pennant winning teams both who lost in the World Series.
Comparing the visible stats:
Rice .298 avg 382 hr 1451 rbi
Cepeda .297 avg 417 hr 1365 rbi
Snider .295 avg 358 hr 1333 rbi
Williams .290 avg 434 hr 1475 rbi
Stargel .282 avg 475 hr 1540 rbi
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