In my opinion, he shoudn't be there now.
Back in 1980, Jack Craig wrote a tremendous column titled, "Rice has numbers, but there's more to the game" He compared Rice's numbers from his first five years to those of ten post WW2 player who went on to have long, all-star level careers, and only Willie Mays's batting stats could match Rice's, but he pointed out that each and every other person on that list had other favorable qualities while Rice had none. He was the worst baserunner in the group, the worst fielder, a pain in the neck in the clubhouse, and he didn't hit in the clutch.
Much was once made of the fact that Rice once had a stretch in which eleven homers in a row that had either tied the game or put his team ahead, but eight or nine of them were first inning homers with the score 0-0.
Bob Ryan once took two years worth of box scores and started calculating things like Rice's batting average in the last three innings when the outcome of the game was in doubt, and no matter how Ryan defined the parameters, Rice's average was always down around .240 to .260.
Rice had the ability to murder a lousy fastball, but he couldn't hit a good one. Carlton Fisk hit the same against every pitcher, and while I'm no Carl Yasterzenski booster, I remember that well into his career, he had a lifetime average against Nolan Ryan of about .380 with five home runs in about eighty at bats. Whenever Rice went up against a big name pitcher at crunch time, we all knew it was over.
