re Raines/ Will, Bagwell/Palmeiro
Last year or first year of voting, Raines deserved to be in, imo. Do you think Raines should be in?
And I dont think Maury Wills and Raines are a good comparison....I mean Wills played shortstop, while Raines was a career outfielder. You need far better offensive stats to get in as an outfielder then a shortstop. And Raines had far better offensive stats then Wills.
Raines had a carreer batting average of .294, OBA of .385, Slugging Ave of .425, WAR of 69.1, and he had 808 stolen bases with the highest stolen base success rate (.85) of ALL TIME for players with a signicant number of SB attempts.
Wills had a career batting average of .281, OBA of .330, Slugging Ave of .331, WAR of 39.6, with 586 stolen bases and a .75 success rate.
I dont think they are really compareable b/c of their different positions and the parks they played in, but Raines was a much better offensive player then Wills, imo.
As for Palmiero vs Bagwell, I think Bagwell had better offensive numbers while playing in a tougher park. Playing four fewer years, Bagwell had a career WAR of 79.6 vs 71.6 for Palmeiro. Bagwell also had one MVP award, finished second once, and third once. Raffy's highest finish was fifth in the MVP voting. Bags had almost 40 point better OBA, and 25 point better slugging average. Palmeiro gets credit for longevity, and his 120 more career homers...great numbers. But I think Bagwell was consistently better over this career, and would have hit as many HR's as Raffy if it werent for his career ending shoulder injury.
Now Palmeiro deserves to be in the HOF based on his numbers, imo. However they are tainted by steroid use. I dont know if Bagwell used them or not, and I dont really feel like researching the point. But if I did have an MVP vote, I would have to research that kinda stuff.
best.
best.
