Circle of Greats 1950 Round Results: Tim Reigns |

Tim Raines emerged from a very close election as the 22nd inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. After the lead in the voting swung back and forth for much of the week, Raines nudged out Tony Gwynn with some late gains over the last couple of days. More on Tim, and the 1950 round of voting, after the jump.

In his prime, during his core years with the Expos, Raines was probably the most valuable offensive force in the National League.

RE24 is a stat (available at on baseball-reference) that credits an offensive player for the positive or negative value he creates with his hitting and baserunning performance, in terms of improving or reducing his team’s chances of scoring runs during an inning. Unlike OBP, SLG, OPS or Runs Created, RE24 takes into account the number of outs and men on base at the time of the hitter’s or baserunner’s performance. So with RE24, for example, a grand slam gets the hitter more credit than a solo homer. And a grand slam with two outs gets more credit than a grand slam with none out, because with none out those three runners on base would probably score anyway. Many sabermetrically-inclined folks find RE24 to be an especially powerful tool in gauging hitting and baserunning performance.

With that introduction, here are the highest RE24 numbers (according to baseball-reference) accumulated in the NL over the ten-year period 1981-1990:

1. Tim Raines 362.2
2. Mike Schmidt 310.1
3. Pedro Guerrero 309.5
4. Dale Murphy 295.6
5. Darryl Strawberry 293.6

That’s a big difference between #1 and #2 on this particular list. RE24 may help top stolen-base guys receive their fair share of credit in comparison to big sluggers. Teams may pitch around a big slugger in a key base/out situation, while it seldom makes sense to do so with a speed guy who can quickly turn a walk into a run. If that’s the case, RE24 may give those speedier guys a more appropriate evaluation, recognizing the extra leverage their skills provide, than context-neutral stats.

And Raines was indeed one of the great speed guys of all time. Here are the top 5 career numbers in the baserunning component of baseball-reference’s Wins Above Replacement:

Top 5, MLB All-Time, Rbaser
1. Rickey Henderson 144
2. Willie Wilson 120
3. Tim Raines 116
4. Luis Aparicio 93
5. Max Carey 89

*******************

–Tony Gwynn has now finished second in the voting each of the last four rounds, and six times overall.
–The 1950 ballot had an unusually high number of holdovers “on the bubble”, six to be exact. Five appeared on at least 10% of the ballots cast and thus survive to the next induction round. One of these five guys, Dwight Evans, needed every single vote he got to stay above the 10% line.
–Goose Gossage was the one on-the-bubble holdover who fell short of 10% — one vote short. In order to get back on the ballot for the 1949 rounds of balloting, Goose will have to finish in the top two in the redemption round that begins tonight.

As usual, you can check out the complete voting record for this past round at Google Docs. The link is here: 1950 COG Vote Tally

If you would like to review the history of the COG voting, a spreadsheet summary of the voting is here: COG Vote Summary , with a summary of the raw vote totals on Sheet 1 and a summary of the percentage totals on Sheet 2.

The Circle of Greats membership thus far:
Jeff Bagwell
Bert Blyleven
Wade Boggs
Barry Bonds
George Brett
Gary Carter
Roger Clemens
Tom Glavine
Rickey Henderson
Randy Johnson
Barry Larkin
Greg Maddux
Paul Molitor
Mike Mussina
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Cal Ripken, Jr.
Curt Schilling
Ozzie Smith
Frank Thomas
Larry Walker
Robin Yount

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Dr. Doom

11 years ago

Tony Gwynn: always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Darien

Reply to Dr. Doom

There’s an image I needed. Thanks, Doc!

Hartvig

Raines. Molitor. Henderson.

Less than one-fifth of the way there and we’ve already elected arguably the 3 greatest leadoff hitters in history to the Circle of Greats.

Author

birtelcom

Reply to Hartvig

It will be interesting to see how Raines fares going forward in the BBWAA Hall elections. He’s been moving up steadily in recent votes and topped 50% in the last election, but there is a lot of competition and the writers’ process has become very messy with the PED problem hanging over everything.

Brent

I realize he is an entirely different type of player, but Wade Boggs led off more than he batted in any other position, and he would have to be included in your group above too.

Reply to Brent

Good point. Henderson batted lead off virtually all of the time but Raines and Molitor did just a little over 60%. I’d say a just a little under 50% of the time Boggs is still more of a lead off guy that anything else. I always find it a little weird to think that guys that today we would probably think of as leadoff hitters (+ stolen bases + high OBP – home runs) like Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins virtually never hit there. I know in the dead ball era their doubles and triples power actually made them sluggers… Read more »

A case could be made for Ichiro as one of the great leadoff men ever as well, and that despite his having played a good portion of his career outside MLB.

Lawrence Azrin

If you go back to the 19th century, it has to be Billy Hamilton – just look at his runs/game averages.

Richard Chester

Top ten for percentage of PA as a lead-off hitter (3000 PA minimum).
Player …………… Leadoff PA….. Total PA…..%
Rickey Henderson…. 13122…. 13346…. 98.3
Vince Coleman……… 5931…….. 5970….. 97.7
Ron LeFlore………….. 4756…….. 4872….. 97.6
Max Bishop…………. 5638…….. 5789……. 97.4
Lenny Dykstra……… 5064…….. 5282……. 95.9
George Burns………. 5761…….. 6140……. 93.8
Brian Roberts………. 5185…….. 5621……. 92.2
Al Bumbry…………… 5177……… 5619……. 92.2
George Case……….. 5045……… 5516…….. 91.5
Ichiro Suzuki……….. 8158………. 8989……. 90.8

--bill

Lu Blue (20s and 30s) and Stan Hack (30s and 40s) were both good leadoff hitters, although at the level of Lofton.

A surprise to me was Mike Hargrove. Only 20 percent of his PA were as a leadoff hitter, but he had a .287/.415/.442 line hitting leadoff.

Reply to --bill

Gah.

The end of the first sentence should be, “NOT at the level of Lofton.”

Top 10 in OBP for leadoff hitters:
Max Bishop .424
Eddie Stanky .417
Wade Boggs .413
Rickey Henderson .401
Earle Combs .399
Richie Ashburn .399
Lu Blue.399
Stan Hack .398
Eddie Yost .396
Tony Phillips .386

Lofton came in 24th at .371

oneblankspace

Richie Ashburn, in the broadcast booth, once described a player on the Phillies as the “best leadoff hitter since… since me.”

Reply to oneblankspace

Most Runs Created (b-ref PI calculation) as a Phillies Leadoff Man:
1. Jimmy Rollins 935
2. Richie Ashburn 756
3. Lenny Dykstra 518
4. Tony Taylor 395
5. Doug Glanville 327

The giant gap between #1 and #2 in your list of RE24 leaders is due to Schmidt retiring after a terrible 1989 season, in which he played 42 games.

If you restrict the time period to 1981-1988, Schmidt has 310.8 RE24 and Raines 297.8.

brp

Being second to Mike Schmidt in anything relating to the 1980s is still pretty damn good.

Reply to brp

Being that close to Schmidt emphasizes how good Raines was, and I (as a teenage baseball fan in the eighties) would never have guessed.

bstar

Same time period for me, too, but another reason Raines looks so good in the ’80s is the dearth of truly transcendent talent from both a hitting and pitching standpoint in the ’80s. Guys like Brett, Schmidt, and Winfield etc. sort of straddled the ’70s and ’80s. The only Inner Circle HOF’er (in my opinion) to play the heart of his career in the ’80s was Rickey. Same thing with pitching. Seaver, Carlton, Palmer, Niekro, etc. were winding up their careers in the ’80s, while Saberhagen/Hershiser/Gooden couldn’t string together a great career (and they debuted toward the middle of the… Read more »

mosc

So I took Gossage off of the next ballot. Wow. 🙁

Reply to mosc

If I were you, I would try to avoid coming up to bat against him anytime soon.

Although you did have help from everyone else who didn’t include him on the ballot.

Reply to birtelcom

I voted for him the year before and in the redemption round. But if I had to do it again I would have picked him over Guidry because Gator didn’t have much of a chance. So yeah Goose, my bad. But please remember all those cheers I gave too ok?