I like white Rice...

... but not black Rice.

Evans was a life long Red Sox right fielder, whose career just spanned three decades. His career from 1972-1991. Jim Rice played from 1974-1989, so Evans played during the same exact era as Rice, on the same team, on the same patch of outfield grass. Rice still has a shot to make the HOF in his fifteenth try. Evans was knocked off the voting in three seasons, never getting higher than 10.4% of the vote in any of those three years.

So my question is, if Evans barely made a dent in the voting for three years, why was Rice not kicked off the ballot in even shorter time? So lets look at the numbers (KEEP IN MIND I AM NOT ADVOCATING OR DENYING THAT EVANS SHOULD BE A HOF'er):

JR: 9058 PA- .298/.352/.502/.854/128+ with a .375 wOBA, .293 EqA, 1367 EqR, 80.2 WARP3

DE: 10569 PA- .272/.370/.470/.840/127+ with a .374 wOBA, .296 EqA, 1606 EqR, 116.5 WARP3

Hmmm, who was better? Near identical OPS+ and wOBA. But Evans has a better EqA even though he played longer past his prime and even though the disparity in PA is big, I doubt in the twilight of Rice's career, he would muster enough EqR and WARP3 to pass Evans. The WARP3 is really striking. 80.2 is bad for a HOF hitter. Just bad. Pitiful. Disgusting. In almost as many PA, Bernie Williams has a much higher WARP3.

And the rest is taken from a member of SOSH:
Always regarded as a good defensive outfielder, Evans topped 10 assists from right field five times in his career. Additionally, for his career he scored 277 runs above replacement as a right fielder and 85 runs above average against other right fielders. In stark contrast, while Rice was able to accumulate a great deal of assists over his career (likely aided by both his throwing arm and playing LF at Fenway), Rice was not able to score close to an average RAA over the course of his career (-51)....While I do not think Rice should be a member of the Hall of Fame (though he deserves much consideration), I do believe his teammate does. Evans was a much better fielder, almost an equal as a hitter and lasted much longer. While Jim Rice had a season that trumps any season of Evans (Rice’s 78 ranks with the best of seasons), Evans was a tremendous RF season after season, over three decades. He’s Boston’s Billy Williams.

He sums it up nicely. Rice is not a HOF'er and if any Red Sox alumnus deserves to be in the HOF, it is Dwight Evans and not Rice. End o' story.

And one thing real fast on Tim Raines and why he is a ROCK that deserves to be in the HOF. In the National League in the 1980s, the league slugging percentage once topped .400 (1987, .404) and often was .360-.370. As a result, the "break-even" point for stolen bases was a lot lower than the 75-80% it is today (somewhere around 62-65%, I think). Because so few players had extra base power, the ability to get yourself into scoring position without giving away an out was incredibly valuable. Stealing 60+ bases at an 86% clip (which was Raines success rate from 1981-1990, when he averaged 62.7 steals/year) provided a ton of value. That is just another point to prove Raines is a HOF player.