White Sox great Harold Baines elected to National Baseball Hall of Fame

Harold Baines at the plate in 1986

Here's a surprise: Former White Sox outfielder and designated hitter Harold Baines was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.

Baines received the required 12 out of a possible 16 votes from the Today's Game Era Committee to earn enshrinement. Former Cubs relief pitcher Lee Smith also was voted in by the committee and will join Baines in the 2019 Hall of Fame class.

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting Baines to get elected. He played 22 seasons (1980-2001) in the major leagues, including three stints with the Sox (1980-89, 1996-97 and 2000-01), and he was a good hitter for a long time. However, he played 1,643 games as a designated hitter, and "only" 1,061 games as an outfielder, which I figured would be a huge strike against him for the purists.

Plus, Baines was not a lifetime .300 hitter. He did not hit 500 career home runs, nor did he collect 3,000 career hits. So, he didn't reach any of the "counting statistics" milestones that we normally associate with Hall of Fame-caliber hitters.

Baines was a career .289 hitter, with .356 on-base percentage and a .465 slugging percentage. He totaled 2,866 hits, 384 home runs, 1,628 RBIs, 488 doubles, 49 triples and 1,299 runs scored.

There's nothing wrong with these numbers. That's a helluva career, in fact, but Baines only led the league in a category once in the 22 years he played. He topped the American League in 1984 with a .541 slugging percentage as a member of the Sox. He never won an MVP award, and never finished higher than ninth (1985). He had little or no defensive utility after he hurt his knee, and heck, he never got more than 6.1 percent of the vote on any Hall ballot before this.

Here's the one case I can make for Baines: He probably would have reached that 3,000-hit plateau if work stoppages hadn't cost him games in three seasons of his career -- 1981, 1994 and 1995.

Is that a good case? Ehhh ... probably not. I'm happy for Baines, but really surprised at his election.