Jim Rice got elected to the Hall of Fame today.
For FanGraphs tonight, I took a look at his worth. I began by manually calculating his wOBA and comparing it to the league average for his 15 year career, adjusting it for Fenway and ended up getting the exact same result as the Batting Runs number listed for Rice on B-R.
So I feel pretty good about that measurement (it's been noted before by others, even Tango I believe, that the Batting Runs is a fairly good measure as it's linear weights-based and park and league adjusted using B-R's factors).
Jim Rice played 3/4 of his games in an OF corner spot and 1/4 at DH. Using Tango's positional adjustments [granted they're aren't intended for that time period, they should still be a good proxy], Jim Rice incurred a ten run penalty per season for his position.
So let's compare Jim Rice to our old friend, Player X.
Jim Rice: 9,058 PAs
Player X: 8,672 PAs
Jim Rice: 20 RAA per 600 PA with his bat
Player X: 40 RAA per 600 PA with his bat
Jim Rice: 10 run penalty for his position
Player X: 12 run penalty for his position
So you have Player X pretty much kicking Jim Rice's ass in terms of value here over what amounts to essentially the same career length. If Jim Rice played defense like Mike Cameron, then they might be about equal. Might.
Jim Rice got elected to the Hall of Fame today.