[Mondogarage]

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I am quite aware of Mark McGwire and Dave Kingman's stats. The fact of the matter is you believe that the most apt comparison to Mark McGwire is a guy who walked half as much as he did in the same amount of at-bats. The only thing they have in common was that Dave Kingman hit a lot of home runs. Dave Kingman was a decent MLB player because he was a historically good home run hitter. Mark McGwire was an amazing player, mostly because he was a historically great home run hitter, but also because he had a career OBP of nearly .400. Mark McGwire is Dave Kingman if Dave Kingman could hit .260, walk 700 more times, and hit 140 more home runs.

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Point taken, but again, Kingman wasn't dogged by steroid accusations and didn't play in an era where HR numbers almost across the board are being questioned.

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In fact, let's look at Tim Raines' career vs. Jim Rice's career, look at their EqAs. EqA includes stolen bases, values walks correctly, and adjusts for both era and park.

Here's a chart of their EqA at different ages.

Tim Raines ends up as a much better hitter by this metric, which should be no surprise since the SLG advantage of Jim Rice is wiped out by park adjustements and Tim Raines' OBP, and the it adds in base-stealing.

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That's great. So how many BBWAAs actually pay attention to EqA when filling out their ballots? Why does Bill James rank Jim Rice a much more likely HOF candidate than Raines?

I thought the discussion here was who will end up in the HOF and who won't, not whether Player A is better than Player B. A large number of HOF voters are not sabremetricians. And even Rice hasn't made it in thus far after 14 attempts, and certainly may not this time (though I think he will). The fact that Rice isn't in yet, and is ranked by the ultimate stathead as a more likely candidate than Raines, probably says a lot about the odds of Raines getting in.