The Baseball Hall of Fame will announce the 2017 class of inductees today, and thanks to the work of Ryan Thibodaux, we can be pretty certain that the Hall is going to welcome Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines to Cooperstown this summer. Ivan Rodriguez might join them, depending on the percentage of votes he gets from people who haven’t revealed their ballots publicly, while Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero look like they’re going to get close enough where their election next year is highly likely.
But the story of the year is Raines, who will get elected in his final opportunity. In no small part due to the lobbying efforts of Jonah Keri, Raines will likely clear the 75% threshold after getting 24.3% of the vote on his first time on the ballot, back in 2008, then falling to 22.6% the next year. Raines’ election is another sign that players are being evaluated differently now, with the triple crown stats losing their long-held positions of canon, and instead a player’s total contributions now being considered.
But I know that, for a lot of people — even many inside the game — it’s still tough to think of Raines as a superstar. He was a corner outfielder who didn’t hit home runs. He had the profile of a center fielder, but not the defense to go along with it. He was a square peg in a world of round holes, and because so much of his value came from walks and stolen bases, he wasn’t really seen as a superstar when he played.
These days, though, we have better tools to evaluate players, and things like wRC+ have allowed us to give different types of players their due, even if they don’t fit the traditional mold of production. So, just for fun, let’s take a look at what Raines would be if he were an amalgamation of modern players.
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