Baseball Chat

[nelson1234]

welp, Raines deserves the Hall of Fame imo, and I'll rest my case on this from Sport Illustrated (just the other day),

"Raines ranks eighth in career WAR among all leftfielders, exceeding the standard for Hall of Famers by 4.0 WAR. He's 10th in peak WAR, 0.7 above the standard, and eighth in JAWS, 2.3 points above the standard. Of the seven leftfielders above him, five are in the Hall of Fame—Ted Williams, Henderson, Carl Yastrzemski, Ed Delahanty and Al Simmons—with the other two being Barry Bonds and the banned Pete Rose (classified here because he had more value at that position than anywhere else). Fourteen other Hall of Fame leftfielders are below him in the rankings, including the BBWAA-elected Willie Stargell (15th), Ralph Kiner (19th), Jim Rice (28th) and Brock (36nd). If Raines's rankings sound crazy, consider that The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract placed him eighth among leftfielders back in 2001 as well....

....while his 84.7% success rate is the best among thieves with more than 400 attempts (better than Henderson's 80.8%), that skill resonates less in today's power-saturated era, limiting the impression of his all-around ability. Being "the second-best leadoff hitter of all-time" isn't a tremendously catchy tag, either.

Via WAR and JAWS, Raines edges 2007 inductee Gwynn (68.1/41.1/54.9) across the board......."

http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/12/01/jaws-2017-hall-of-fame-ballot-tim-raines