Hall Of Fame Argument : Tim Raines

Tim Raines played 3 seasons with the Yankees. While that might be only a small fraction of his career its still enough for me to be allowed to post it on PSA. It is a Yankees blog after all. He played from 1979-2002. One must truly have love for the game to play this long. While usually this inflates most peoples stats Raines had an excellent career. Yet for the past few years the BBWAA has been leaving him off their ballots. You may say its early in is voting, but in his years up for the Hall he has received 24.3% and 22.6% of the vote. It is decreasing so you can see the little panic I have so far. Some thing his chances for the Hall maybe diminished by his admission to cocaine addiction. What happens off the field should not ruin what you did on the field though. 

If Tim Raines ever makes the Hall it will be with the Expos. That is the team he started and played most of his career with. I have Raines in my top 100 baseball players of all-time. Who cares what I think though. So I'll just use stats to show why Raines is a HOF'er. 

First lets look into Raines' best aspect of his game, baserunning. Raines is one of the great base runners ever. He stole 808 bases and was only caught stealing 146 times. That is a total of 954 attempts with a base stealing average of 85%. That is the highest rate in history for people with at least 300 attempts. Maybe behind Rickey Henderson for the best base stealer all time in many minds, but Raines is the most efficient. I'd say he is the best.

Raines was a solid top of the order hitter. He would bat around .290's to the .300's throughout his career. He was also a switch hitter and I'd rank him top 5 all time there. He was excellent at getting on base. He has a career .385 OBP. From 1981 to 1998 his lowest OBP was .350. Outstanding. Who wouldn't want him to be at the top of your line up? He was a speed demon which distracted pitchers. He has 1571 runs scored that shows he produces offense.  He had a .425 SLG, .374 wOBA, and a wRC+ 137. Just spewing there. His 10.9 K% is pretty low. So he wouldn't strike out for you. Just a great top of the order hitter. 

Raines also had a long peak. I believe his peak was from 1981-1988. From that time he didn't have a WAR lower than 3.1. His 7 year peak was all with the Expos. From 1983-1987 his lowest WAR was 6.2. A 6.0 WAR is a great player. Tim Raines is top 80 in total WAR with 71.0. This alone should say he is Hall Of Fame worthy. Other players that are HOF'ers with similar WAR numbers are Johnny Bench, Brooks Robinson, Luke Appling, and Tony Gwynn. 

Someone with this type of production and value should be having their acceptance speech in Cooperstown, NY. He is at least the second best base stealer ever and has a top 100 WAR ever. Which should land him on anyone's top 100 players of all-time list. BBWAA TIM RAINES.