| Sure, but it cuts off half of Reggie!'s (154) best years. Mike Schmidt (154) was great for a year before that, and 3 years afterwards. Rickey! (143) is only active for half that time, same for Boggs (139, OBP heavy). George Brett (150) is like Schmidt, great for those years and 4 afterwards. Eddie Murray (141) starts in 1977. I could go on, but the point is, you gave an extremely narrow example of peers to compare Rice with. Rice's best 12 consecutive seasons give a 133 OPS+. The numbers in brackets are the OPS+ of those players over their best 12 consecutive. And everyone of them, with the possible exception of Reggie! added value either defensively, on the basepaths or both. In effect, you are punishing every player who didn't happen to have their best years at the exact same time as Rice. So pointing out that his SLG% was really good for the era, or all the triples he hit, unusual for a slugger like that, or that he was really durable, that's fine. But '75 - '86 is a poor excuse for providing context. Barely more than a bit of trivia, it's one step away from "Vince Dimaggio hit 43 more HRs than his brothers combined, from '43-'45." |
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