Former Expo Tim Raines Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
Former Montreal Expo has been elected to the baseball Hall of Fame with 86% of votes in his final year of eligibility, along with Astro Jeff Bagwell and catcher Ivan Rodriguez. Another former Expo, Vladimir Guerrero, just missed the 75% need to enter the Hall, with 71.7% in his first year of eligibility, while Canadian and former Expo Larry Walker got 21.9% of votes. It is almost certain that Guerrero will be elected in future years, while Walker's career has been largely discounted by many Hall of Fame voters because he played much of his career in hitter-friendly Colorado. I disagree with the discounting of Walker's record as statistical analysis of his career that neutralizes hitter-friendly parks show him as being a deserving candidate.
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While 3,000 hits or 500 home runs are often thought of as benchmarks for Cooperstown, modern baseball analytics have cast Raines’ career in a new light. The switch hitter walked an incredible 1,330 times and had a .385 on-base percentage along with 808 stolen bases to rank fifth all-time on that list. His stolen-base success percentage of 84.7 is the best ever and the four players ahead of Raines on the stolen-base list are all in the Hall of Fame: Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock, Billy Hamilton and Ty Cobb.
“He’s undeniably a Hall of Fame player,” said Sportsnet’s Jeff Blair, who covered the Expos for the Montreal Gazette from 1989 to 1997. “I think he’s an example of a player in the ’80s whose case has really been helped by the development of analytics. He’s an analytics darling. If you’re into baseball analytics, you look at Tim Raines and your first reaction is: How the hell was this guy not a first-ballot guy?”
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