What Would a Modern Tim Raines Look Like?

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.

For these purposes, we’re going to call 1981 to 1993 the era of Peak Tim Raines. That was the 13 year period where he was essentially an everyday player, and while he still produced some value later in his career as a role player, we want to focus on what Raines was at his best, and this 13 year stretch was when Raines really showed he could do. Here is what Raines did offensively during that span.

Because the game has changed a lot, it’s helpful to put those numbers in context with the averages of the times; during that 13 year stretch, the league average walk rate was 9%, the average strikeout rate was 14%, and the average ISO was .130. So, in comparison to the average of the times, Raines’ walk rate was 47% higher than league average, and his strikeout rate was 39% lower than league average. Translate those numbers into the 2016 environment, you’d have an equivalent player put up a 12% walk rate and a 13% strikeout rate in today’s game.

So, let’s look for that kind of strike zone control. Finding an exact match is difficult because of how the game has moved towards strikeouts, but there are two guys who controlled the zone at a similar rate last year: David Ortiz (13% BB%, 14% K%, .93 BB/K) and Buster Posey (10% BB%, 11% K%, .94 BB/K). So that’s the kind of plate discipline a modern Raines would have.

Now, let’s talk about power. Raines’ ISO during his 13 year peak was almost exactly equal to league average, so this is easier; we just look for guys with about a .165 ISO last year. You’re not going to find a lot of premium sluggers in this range, but this is where guys like Kole Calhoun, Eric Hosmer, and Russell Martin hung out, and they hit 63 home runs between them last year. These aren’t sluggers, but they are guys with enough pop to hit in the middle of a batting order, and of course, none of these guys got on base the way Raines did.

And then, there’s the speed. From 1981 to 1993, Raines stole 743 bases, and he did so at an 85% success rate. That’s an insane number of extra bases gained for his teams, and that’s why Raines was credited with adding 94 baserunning runs above an average player during his prime. But that number actually undersells Raines’ accomplishments, because our baserunning totals prior to 2002 are based solely on stolen bases and caught stealing, and don’t include any extra value for doing things like going first to third on a single or avoiding a double play, where speedsters can add a lot of extra value.

For comparison, Billy Hamilton is the game’s current most valuable baserunner, racking up +36.6 baserunning runs during his three years in the majors. However, 45% of that total comes from the non-SB portions of the calculations, which we have now because of our better data sources since 2002. These elite speedsters can add a lot of value through baserunning that isn’t base stealing, and Raines isn’t getting any credit for that in our calculations. That +94 runs undersells him by a good bit, and if we assume that Raines’ speed helped him in a similar fashion on the bases, that should be more like +130 runs, or about +10 runs per year.

Now, of course, the game has changed, and it’s harder to steal bases in this day and age, but Raines speed would still be at or near the top of the charts in this day and age. At something like +10 baserunning runs per year, the only modern comparison is Billy Hamilton.

So, that’s the profile; the strike zone judgment of Posey or Ortiz, the power of Calhoun, Hosmer, or Martin, and the speed of Hamilton. Or, if we just want to cheat and use his total offensive value, we can note that he put up a 371 runs of offensive value during this 13 year prime, which translates to about 28 runs better than average on a per-season basis. And again, that’s without the full credit for his baserunning, so realistically, he’s probably more like +32 per year.

What kinds of players were worth 32 runs of offensive value last year? Well, there’s Miguel Cabrera at +33, Brian Dozier at +32, and Robinson Cano at +31. They’re all okay. Edwin Encarnacion, one of the best hitters in baseball, was worth +27 runs in offensive value last year. These would be Raines’ peers, in terms of pure offensive value.

And he did that for 13 years, plus hung around for another eight years as a solid part-time player after that. And that’s why Tim Raines is going to Cooperstown. That’s why he deserves to go to Cooperstown. Tim Raines was a great player, one of the very best of his era, and if he played today, there wouldn’t be any argument about the fact that he was a superstar.