Statistical Comparisons between Joe Morgan & Tim Raines

[3and2Fastball]

I thought it might be interesting to compare a player like Morgan who is arguably a little over-rated by stat-heads and a player like Raines who many feel should be in the Hall of Fame.

 

At first glance to the casual fan, Morgan's numbers don't jump off the page at them, a .271 career BA, just 16 HR's a season. But as we know Morgan had a .392 career OBP and a OPS+ of 137 and he stole a LOT of bases. His peak years of '75 & '76 were just outrageous, a .444 OBP with 60 steals and 27 HR's in 1976 ranks as one of the most valuable seasons in MLB history, especially considering a Gold Glove 2B achieved that... and the year before that he had a .466 OBP with 67 steals and 17 HR's. Both were MVP seasons

 

The thing I cannot wrap my head around is Joe Morgan's career .182 BA in the post-season, especially for a guy who was known as a "clutch hitter". This was in 50 games played so not a hugely small sample. He did have a few great post-season series, especially the 1976 World Series where he put up a .333/.412

 

Now I would never argue that Tim Raines was a better defensive player than Morgan (while Raines played some 2B he was mainly an OF) but I think a credible argument could be made that Raines was a More Valuable Offensive Player.

 

Tim Raines was a switch hitter who hit .294 over his career with a .385 OBP. And he was more of a stolen base threat than Morgan with almost as much power (Raines averaged 28 Doubles per 162 games over his career while Morgan averaged 27 doubles per 162). Raines had 5 straight seasons of 70+ Stolen Bases. Raines' caught stealing ratio is off the charts.

 

Morgan's top season of Total Bases was 1976 with 272 plus 60 Steals plus 114 walks for a 446 Total

Raines had a season of Total Bases in 1983 with 264 TB's + 90 Steals plus 97 Walks for a 451 Total

 

Raines had 10 seasons over 200+ Total Bases and in those 10 seasons he stole 592 Bases (an avg of 59.2 SB's)

Morgan had 11 seasons over 200+ Total Bases and in those 11 seasons he stole 514 bases (an avg of 46.7 SB's)

 

Joe Morgan hit .267 with a .381 OBP vs LHP

Joe Morgan hit .274 with a .398 OBP vs RHP

Tim Raines hit .293 with a .381 OBP vs LHP

Tim Raines hit .294 with a .387 OBP vs RHP

 

Again, Morgan had a career .182 post-season BA. Raines had a .270 career post-season BA

 

Morgan averaged 42 SB's per 162 games

Raines averaged 52 SB's per 162 games

 

If you were putting together an All-Time All-Star team, and you didn't need a 2B (say you already had Rogers Hornsby on your team) and what you needed was a table setter, a spark-plug, a lead-off hitter, I'd say Tim Raines might be a better pick than Joe Morgan

[TooLiveBrew]

Raines is definitely a guy I've felt belongs in the Hall. Really interesting to see just how closely he compares to Morgan.