Between "Rock" and a Hard Place

The new Hall of Fame ballot includes the greatest leadoff hitter of all time -- Rickey Henderson -- who is already being fitted for a bust in Cooperstown.

It also includes arguably the second-greatest leadoff hitter of all time -- Tim Raines -- who has a Palin 2012's chance of being elected. (That is, less than none.)

I don't know if Raines is a HOFer, in part because no one knows what the criteria are, and in greater part because back in the days when we were valuing the wrong things, Raines never cracked our fame consciousness. When we look back on his career, we don't remember a guy who was dominant.

The numbers, however, beg to differ. They tell a now-familiar tale of a player whose performance was exactly matched to our blind spots.

Consider: Tim Raines never hit 20 home runs or knocked in even 80. He won one Gold Glove and never finished higher than fifth in the MVP voting. During the period of his career when he played fulltime, 1982-1995, his teams made two playoff appearances and won no pennants. He stole a lot of bases, but rarely as many as Henderson at the same time. Despite leading off for two decades, he's nowhere near 3,000 hits. That's not the stuff of HOFers.

Raines suffers because the HOF wants specialists at the top of their craft, not brilliant generalists. It wants 500-HR sluggers who took smaller leads than Norm Coleman. It wants leather-flashers who charmed the Gold Glove voters. It wants boppers lucky enough to come to the plate regularly with runners on base to drive in. Or at least that's what BBWAA voters want.

Consider the rest of Raines' CV: He hit double-digit homers seven times, mostly before the offensive era began. He posted 12 seasons of on-base prowess over .380. He racked up 400 more walks than strikeouts. The most efficient base stealer of all time, he swiped an amazing 85% of the 954 bags he chased. Despite playing in a lousy hitters' park, he finished in the top 10 in on-base percentage seven times, runs scored nine times and overall offensive performance six times. He was an excellent left fielder and a passable center fielder, right fielder and second baseman. Baseball Prospectus rates him the sixth best right fielder of all time, but even if he's the ninth or 10th or 11th best, that's still a jaunty stroll into the Hall.

My point is not that Tim Raines is a HOFer, but that failing the smell test is a poor barometer because our sense of smell is so much better -- and different -- now. Let's educate ourselves that HRs, RBIs and BA are only part of the equation when OBP, SLG, and advanced stats like EQA and VORP tell us so much more.