Jim Rice

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Jim Rice

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Jim Rice

Jim Rice was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 2nd year of eligibility, 2000, with 79.6% of the vote.

Five highlights of Jim Rice's career:

In 1974, Jim Rice won an International League (AAA) Triple Crown playing for Pawtucket (.337, 25 HR, 93 RBI) and was named International League Rookie of the Year and MVP, and the Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year. Rice finished second in American League Rookie-of-the-Year voting the following season.

Jim Rice was named to eight All-Star teams. He was voted an American League All-Star starter four times. He received MVP votes eight times, with six top-5 finishes, and won two Silver Sluggers.

Jim Rice was voted the American League Most Valuable Player in 1978. That season, Rice batted .315/.370/.600 and led the league in slugging percentage, OPS (.970), hits (213), triples (15), home runs (46), RBI (139), and total bases (406). At the time, Rice's 406 total bases in 1978 were the most since Stan Musial in 1948 and the most by an American League player since Joe DiMaggio in 1937.

Jim Rice led the American League in total bases four times, in home runs three times, in RBI and slugging percentage twice each, and in hits, triples, and OPS once each (all in 1978).

One of the most famous photos of Jim Rice - here - is of him cradling a young fan who had been struck in the head by a line drive on August 7, 1982. Rice jumped into the stands and carried the injured boy to the trainers' room. The Red Sox team doctor, Arthur Pappas, said of the boy that Rice "certainly helped him very considerably."

The first two tables below present Jim Rice's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1974	BOS	21	24	2.1	1.4	1.0	0.7
1975	BOS	22	144	20.1	15.4	5.9	4.0
1976	BOS	23	153	17.5	17.5	1.1	-0.7
1977	BOS	24	160	18.4	13.9	5.9	3.9
1978	BOS	25	163	26.5	16.9	11.1	8.8
1979	BOS	26	158	21.4	18.4	4.2	2.2
1980	BOS	27	124	17.2	15.4	2.7	1.1
1981	BOS	28	108	15.5	14.2	2.1	0.6
1982	BOS	29	145	22.2	19.8	3.5	1.5
1983	BOS	30	155	26.5	21.6	6.3	4.0
1984	BOS	31	159	23.6	22.0	2.6	0.5
1985	BOS	32	140	19.9	19.7	1.2	-0.7
1986	BOS	33	157	24.9	19.3	6.8	4.7
1987	BOS	34	108	13.0	14.3	-0.7	-2.0
1988	BOS	35	135	11.8	12.3	0.5	-1.0
1989	BOS	36	56	4.5	4.7	0.3	-0.3
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,089	284.8	246.9	54.4	27.3
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			18	2.2	2.2	0.1	-0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,107	286.9	249.1	54.5	27.2

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1974	BOS	21	24	1.8	1.7	0.3	0.1
1975	BOS	22	144	18.9	16.6	3.5	1.6
1976	BOS	23	153	16.9	18.0	1.2	-0.7
1977	BOS	24	160	18.0	14.2	5.2	3.3
1978	BOS	25	163	25.0	18.4	8.0	5.8
1979	BOS	26	158	22.3	17.5	6.2	4.1
1980	BOS	27	124	16.6	15.9	1.5	-0.1
1981	BOS	28	108	15.3	14.4	1.7	0.2
1982	BOS	29	145	21.6	20.4	2.3	0.4
1983	BOS	30	155	26.1	22.1	5.4	3.1
1984	BOS	31	159	22.8	22.8	1.1	-1.1
1985	BOS	32	140	20.3	19.3	2.1	0.1
1986	BOS	33	157	23.5	20.7	4.0	1.9
1987	BOS	34	108	13.4	13.9	0.3	-1.0
1988	BOS	35	135	11.8	12.3	0.6	-0.9
1989	BOS	36	56	4.3	4.9	-0.1	-0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,089	278.6	253.1	43.2	16.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			18	2.2	2.1	0.2	0.0
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,107	280.8	255.2	43.5	16.2

Jim Rice: One of the Best Hitters of His Generation

Jim Rice's Hall-of-Fame case was based primarily on his batting performance through his prime. From 1975 - 1986, Jim Rice had an average Triple Crown line per 162 games of .304/33/118. That's impressive, but Triple Crown stats can be misleading and need to be put into context.

The top 10 players in batting wins over non-pitcher average from 1975 through 1986 are shown next.

	Top Players, Batting Wins over Non-Pitcher Average (1975 - 1986)
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Mike Schmidt	184.2	122.7	0.600	56.9
2	Reggie Jackson	152.0	118.1	0.563	33.8
3	Eddie Murray	146.8	113.6	0.564	33.2
4	George Brett	149.0	117.6	0.559	31.4
5	Dave Winfield	166.1	132.3	0.557	31.3
6	George Foster	156.0	122.1	0.561	29.3
7	Jim Rice	170.0	140.8	0.547	29.2
8	Greg Luzinski	135.0	104.0	0.565	28.6
9	Dwight Evans	138.5	110.9	0.555	27.6
10	Fred Lynn	134.1	106.8	0.557	27.3

Positional Average excludes pitcher offense

Measured by batting wins over non-pitcher average, Jim Rice was one of the top 10 batters over this 12-year period. Two things strike me as noteworthy about this table. First, three players in the above table were the starting outfield for the Boston Red Sox for much of the first half of this time period.

Second, Jim Rice is second in batting wins in the previous table. This segues into the final section of this article.

Jim Rice: One of the Best Players of His Generation

During his prime, Jim Rice had two key things going for him. First, as noted above, he was an excellent hitter. Second, Jim Rice was also an exceptionally durable player. From 1975 - 1986, Jim Rice played in 1,766 games with 7,754 plate appearances, averages of 147 games and 646 PA per season - and that includes 108 games and 495 PA in 1981, which represented appearing in every Red Sox game during that strike-shortened season. Because of his durability, Jim Rice looks very good when measured against replacement level.

The final table of this article, then, shows the top 10 players in major-league baseball from 1975 through 1986 as measured by pWins over replacement level (pWORL).

	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
	Top 10 Players, 1975 - 1986, ranked by pWORL
1	Mike Schmidt	259.7	192.0	60.1	81.9
2	George Brett	219.3	171.0	46.6	65.4
3	Joe L. Morgan	177.3	136.1	44.1	59.4
4	Eddie Murray	184.2	135.5	40.0	55.7
5	Dave Winfield	260.4	215.5	32.2	55.2
6	Steve Carlton	183.8	161.4	34.0	53.9
7	Dwight Evans	221.7	179.3	34.1	53.5
8	Jim Rice	253.5	214.2	29.9	53.4
9	George Foster	236.6	191.1	32.1	52.7
10	Reggie Jackson	207.6	168.5	31.6	51.3

Article last updated: February 3, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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