Hall of Fame Poll: Tim Raines

Tim Raines is one of my all-time favorite players. He really should be in the Hall. He was the second best lead off hitter of his era, likely the second best lead off hitter of all-time. Unfortunately, he played at the same time as Ricky Henderson.

Tim played for 23 seasons, the first 13 were with the Expos. He played 2502 games, scored 1571 runs., had 2605 hits, 808 stolen bases and a .294/.385/.425 line. He scored over 100 runs in 6 seasons and led the league in stolen bases 4 times. Tim was second in ROY voting in 1981, made 7 All-Star teams and had 1 Silver Slugger.

He is 51st career in runs scored, 35th in walks and 5th in stolen bases. You can see all of his stats here.

I hope that, someday, he will be the 3rd player to go into the Hall of Fame wearing a Expos cap. One of the reasons writers give for leaving him off the ballot is that he used cocaine early in his career. Cocaine, of course, wasn't a performance enhancing drug. It was, for a bit , the drug of choice for folks that could afford it. The same folks voted Paul Molitor into the Hall.

Craig Burley, Jonah Keri, Neate Sager and Tom Tango have put up a webpage making Tim's case for the Hall. I'd like to think the writers will get this one right someday, but I'm not hopeful.