Now that Rickey Henderson is off the table and in the Hall of Fame, voters should look closely at Tim Raines. Henderson was the greatest lead-off hitter of all-time, is the all-time leader in stolen bases, and collected more than 3,000 hits. Raines is not Henderson, but he is deserving of close examination as the Baseball Writers Association of America finalizes its ballots by Saturday for the Cooperstown Class of 2012.
In a Major League career that spanned 23 seasons, from 1979 to 2002, one number stands out on Raines’ resume as a show-stopper. Raines stole 808 bases in his 2,502-game career. He also batted close to .300 during that long stretch, finishing with a .294 average. Eight seasons he topped .300, some years by a significant margin. Those are the highlights and that probably isn’t enough to get Raines into the Hall soon because he was an outfielder with just 170 homers and 980 RBIs.
Raines never pretended to be a power hitter and neither the Montreal Expos, which promoted him to the majors for the first time when he was 20, or the Chicago White Sox, the teams he spent most of his time with, asked him for that type of production. Raines was a seven-time All-Star, won the 1986 National League batting title, was Most Valuable Player of the 1987 All-Star game and meant so much to the Expos franchise that his No. 30 jersey was retired. Of course, all of the Expos’ jerseys are retired now that the club relocated to Washington and become the Nationals.
If a player is nicknamed “Rock,” though, you’ve got to think that his teammates admired his steadiness and steadfastness.
I keep coming back to the stolen base total. Raines is fifth on the all-time Major League list behind Henderson, the far-and-away record-holder, Lou Brock, Billy Hamilton and Ty Cobb. All four are in the Hall of Fame and no one is coming along any time soon to displace Raines from his perch on that list. Hamilton retired so long ago that the American League was just coming into existence during his swan song year. Cobb has been dead for 50 years and retired for more than 80. But he played long enough to stretch into the 1920s when the home run was just starting to gain prominence, and he hated that. Cobb called the old style, the way he played, the way Henderson played, and the way Raines played, “the scientific game.”
Raines led the National League in steals four years with a high in a single year of 90, but the sport’s focus on steals has ebbed and flowed overr the decades. Besides the 808 stolen base total, my next favorite Tim Raines number was his .429 on-base percentage in 1987 when he also hit .330. He won the 1986 National League batting title with a .334 average, making him only the third switch-hitter to win a batting crown. His on-base percentage was a league-leading .413 that season.In 1983, Raines scored 133 runs, leading the majors. Raines scored 1,571 runs in his career and walked 1,330 times. His career on-base percentage is .385.
Raines’ job was to be a table-setter and to make things happen on the base-paths, not clear the bases with big blows. He excelled at his job, but in the big picture, the Hall of Fame picture, he is not a slam-dunk candidate. His chances are dictated by how much voters value Raines’ overall contributions in a game of nuances rather than solely by measuring him against outfielders of the power-hitting variety. Since he first became eligible for the Hall in 2008 Raines has inched up in the balloting. In an election that demands 75 percent approval for selection, Raines scored 37.5 percent of the vote last year, his second straight increase.
Upon retirement as a player, Raines, whose son Tim Raines Jr. played parts of three seasons with the Baltimore Orioles in the early 2000s, stayed in the sport. Over the last decade he has been a minor-league coach, a Major League coach with the White Sox during their 2005 World Series title year, and a minor league manager.
Raines is not going to be elected to the Hall of Fame this year, but he may gain sufficient support as the years pass.
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