Tim Raines - a HOFer whose career stats don’t tell the story
An underrated Hall-of-Famer!
When Tim “Rock” Raines was inducted into the HOF in 2017 nobody was surprised including me. Raines was a player that while you watched him – and I watched him terrorize my Mets for years, looked like what a HOFer was. How Raines only slashed .270/.378/.406 vs. the Metropolitans over 175 games is surprising as it seemed much worse than that. Maybe it was the 77 steals?
Raines ended his playing career in 2002, and at that time deep dives on his career stats were not as easily made as is the case now with Baseball-Reference.com, Fangraphs.com and other sites that go deep into statistical measurement. A closer look at his career numbers still fails to tell the story of his excellent career.
Baseball-Reference black ink means something
Black ink on a player profile indicates the player led baseball in that statistic for that season (or for a career). Tim Raines played 23 seasons and led MLB in Plate Appearances and runs scored twice (he did both in 1983), doubles, batting average, on-base-percentage, and rOBA which measures a player’s offensive contributions weighted in proportion to each event’s actual run value.
Aside from his 808 career steals, good enough for fifth all-time, there really aren’t any eye-popping career stats. He fell 20 RBI’s short of 1,000 and fell short of 200 home runs. He did not average .300 for his career and while he scored 1,571 runs that’s only good enough for 55th place in MLB history. He fell 395 hits short of 3,000. Then look at his entire career and note the 162-game averages – a typical Tim Raines season. It becomes much clearer how consistently excellent was Raines.
Career-wise Raines is tied for 118th for triples, is 146th for doubles.
A lead-off disruptive force
Tim Raines’ nickname “Rock” came about due to his always being in peak physical condition with only 7.8% body fat. As if he was one big muscle.
HOFer the late Rickey Henderson holds the title of ‘greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history’. Tim Raines is among the others that vied for that title. He stole 70 or more bases six times and finished his MLB career with a stolen base percentage of 84.7% - the highest of any player with 400+ steals. Raines came up as an infielder before being moved to left field where he had never played until the big leagues.
Playing during the 1980’s, Raines experimented with cocaine and got hooked eventually entering a drug rehabilitation program. His friendship with teammate, mentor, and fellow HOFer Andre Dawson helped Raines recover. The Expos were a good team for most of the early-mid 1980’s and Raines posted five consecutive years (1983-87) of 5+ bWAR and added one more with the White Sox in 1992 where he played with another HOFer Frank Thomas. Raines ‘only’ stole 45 bases in 1992 because he did not want to steal AB’s from a young and excellent Frank Thomas who drove in 115 runs that season.
After 12 seasons with Montreal, he was traded to the Chicago White Sox for the 1991 season and played five seasons on the South Side. Raines’ postseason resume included reaching the NLCS once with Montreal in the strike-shortened season of 1981, then with the White Sox in 1993 where they lost to WS champion Toronto in the ALCS. He moved to the Yankees in 1996 helping the team to its first WS championship in 18 years. Raines had two more postseason appearances in 1997 and 1998 with the Yankees, but he was left off the World Series roster in 1998, something that had to bother him.
Raines played his last season in 2002 with the Florida Marlins. He is one of only 29 players in baseball history to date to have appeared in Major League baseball games in four decades.
Comparing Tim Raines
I compared Raines to four other players below. Only Lou Brock made it to Cooperstown. All of them played between 2,103 and 2616 games and Raines clearly was the best of the bunch. Kenny Lofton is one of those players I’d put in the HOF tomorrow if I had a vote. Willie Davis and Johnny Damon were like Raines in that they played outfield and stole a lot of bases. Lofton was also an elite defender.
Aside from the stolen bases, statistically Tim Raines’ numbers don’t tell the story of how terrific a player he was. He was good at almost everything and sometimes that can have a player be overlooked. Finally, HOF voters got it right when they voted Raines into Cooperstown, but I will never understand why it took until his final year – the 10th - on the BBWAA ballot to gain entrance. After all he was solid as a rock!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com