His ship is on a direct course for the hall, just needs to keep it on course.

I think he is easily a hall of famer. I think the only thing that would stop him entering is a terrible scandal...so yes let's keep it as slam dunk.

I'm curious...what does getting Jim Riced mean? A quick falloff from a great peak leaving him short on merit, or clearly merits induction and the voters screw him?

Where does the concept of Jim Rice having a "quick falloff" come from, anyway? Not the first time I've heard that, but from 1975 until 1986, he was consistently posting OPS+ numbers of 120-150, falling below 120 only once, in the strike-shortened year of 1981. His most similar players by age are almost uniformly Hall of Famers, with a two-year exception where it's Dick Allen, probably as worthy a candidate as Rice. Both Rice and Allen had pretty notorious attitudes (Allen far moreso of course) and that may be more what's keeping both out of Cooperstown.

It's true that after a 12-year string of greatness -- that's not hyperbole -- Rice was just okay for two years, then had a tough 1989 and retired at 36. So maybe it's legitimate to say quick falloff after a long extended period of stardom ...

That's exactly what I meant is terms of a quick falloff. Maintain a peak for a pretty long time, then 2-3 years later, gone forever. Fair or not, HoF chances are greatly increased by padding the counting stats by playing a few years at mere averageness. I don't want to get into a  "Jim Rice : should he be in the HoF" debate, but his HoF chances would have been much greater if he could have played 2-3 more years as an average player and gotten to 450 Hr, 2800 hits, 1700 rbi.

By OPS+, Guerrero has been better than Rice, but given the offensive era he's in, you need to put up the counting totals to stand out. No one will be surprised when Juan Gonzalez doesn't make it, and he was arguably as good as Rice (not wanted to start that argument here though), and won 2 MVPs (deserved neither, but still, he did win them).