No matter how you slice it, David Ortiz is not worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame. His career numbers, juiced as they are, don’t qualify. Factor in those career numbers are due to Ortiz being on the juice and it is a no brainer.
For those thinking I’m strictly on a moral stand, take a look at Ortiz’s career WAR total: 55.3. That puts him in the company of the lower ranking HOF players and quite a ways below several guys who won’t make it.
Hank Greenberg is right there with 55.5 WAR. However, it took Ortiz over 4000 more plate appearances to match Greenberg in WAR. I’m sorry, but if it takes you 7 more seasons to accumulate the same value as Greenberg, you aren’t as valuable as Greenberg.
Who are some contemporary players sitting similar to Ortiz’s illustrious 55.3 WAR? Former Angel Ian Kinsler sits at 54.1 while needing about 2000 fewer plate appearances. I highly doubt there’s going to be a huge contingent of fans clamoring for Ian Kinsler to make the Hall. Yet, by value, Kinsler was equal to Big Papi. On a season by season and game by game basis, Kinsler was more valuable.
Bobby Abreu and Jim Edmonds sport WAR’s over 60. They were more valuable than Ortiz yet nobody is clamoring for them in the Hall. Is Johnny Damon a Hall of Famer? He was more valuable than Ortiz in much less playing time.
The reason for Ortiz’s low WAR is simple: he added no value with the glove and negative value with his base running. In short, he was a one trick pony. While his peers, such as Kinsler, could help his team win on nearly every play, Ortiz could only help his team from the batter’s box.
What would really make a mockery of the Hall of Fame is the way David Ortiz came about those stats: Performance Enhancing Drugs.
As any baseball fan knows, David Ortiz failed the very performance enhancing drugs test Major League Baseball ever administered. Rather than face the music, Ortiz has gone on to blame the Yankees for somehow leaking his positive test result.
But to think Ortiz got caught and quit would be foolish. Absent proper testing, we don’t know if Ortiz was using PED’s as a member of the Minnesota Twins. However, the Twins did cut Ortiz after the 2002 season despite having a year of control over him. I’ve often wondered if the upcoming PED tests were a factor in that decision.
What we can look at are numbers. Prior to testing positive, Ortiz had put up a pretty solid .266/.348/.461 line that was 8% better than league average by OPS+. After testing positive, Ortiz went on a tear hitting .290/.386/.570 which was 48% better than league average by the same metric.
Ortiz hit more home runs in 2003 and 2004 than he had in the previous five years with the Twins. Probably the biggest smoking gun was the lack of age curve for Ortiz. He led the league in slugging his age 41 season. Not even Barry Bonds did that.
Speaking of Bonds, he’s not in the Hall of Fame because of his links to PED’s. Yet Ortiz failed more tests than him. And with Bonds, one can make the case he’d shown multi faceted baseball greatness prior to taking the drugs. You can’t say the same for Ortiz.
But, for fun let’s compare their last two seasons. We all know Barry was juiced to the gills by then. Bonds put up an outstanding .273/.467/.555 slash line good for 162 OPS+. Ortiz managed to outdo Bonds by leading the league in slugging at age 40 and put up .294/.381/.587 good for production 55% better than league average over his last two years.
These are the only two men in MLB history to put up such prolific production with ages that started with 4’s.
But don’t let a positive test and raw numbers convince you. Ortiz has basically admitted to steroid use several times. Dan Shaugnessy rips him to shreds here, but there are two very important take aways from Big Papi.
In the piece Ortiz himself says he’s been testing more than 80 times. Only players in the protocol get tested that often. But here’s the damning piece: In order to prove his innocence, Ortiz offers to mail Shaughnessy the results.
You only get notified of a failed test. This is the equivalent of saying I know how fast I drive because I get tickets in the mail all the time.
So, let’s take a look and see. We have a guy who is a one trick pony with a lower than HOF average career WAR. His one trick was due to chemistry as much or more so than talent. Yet people want him in the most sacred position in baseball.
Yes, I fully expect David Ortiz to accept an undeserved call to Cooperstown tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then sometime in the next couple of years. He’s gotten a free pass for his blatant cheating his entire career and I doubt it stops now.
But his numbers do not dictate he’s a Hall of Famer. How his numbers were accumulated should remove all doubt.
Make no doubt, inducting David Ortiz will be a new low for the Hall of Fame. It will make a mockery of the career of the players who made it there the right way and will be the ultimate slap in the face to the players who just missed induction because they too played the right way.
Not a huge deal for me but there are definitely more deserving players that never got a sniff. His downturn in his mid 30’s with a sudden rebirth is almost surely due to HGH or steroids IMHO as players don’t rebound from age related slowdowns. There is also not injury history that he was recovering from to point at. My read is that he cheated, got rich and now is the benefactor of a good “Big Papi” PR/marketing campaign.
Are you kidding ? all the greats get better with age.
(Except if you’re Albert Pujols)
I don’t have problems with Ortiz in the HoF. I’m a “Big Hall” guy. But I completely agree that it is incredible irony that he gets in 1st ballot and Bonds is kept out. Somebody tried to argue with me that Ortiz was the greatest in the postseason. Career postseason OPS: Ortiz .947 Bonds .936. But there is no comparison between the two. Ortiz compares much more to Sammy Sosa in overall value. They are relatively close in WAR (Sosa a decent chunk higher), they both grabbed the hearts of baseball fans (I would argue Sosa more than Ortiz with the home run chase), and they have pretty similar PED suspicions. Yet Sosa is off in his last year with only 17% of the vote. I could not be more disappointed with the BBWAA. I don’t like steroid users in the HoF, but it’s far too late to stop that, with some users already in and the enablers of the steroid era also in. At least we have Buck O’Neil and Minnie Minoso going in this year.
Why Ortiz and not Bonds? Why Piazza and not Sheffield? Why IRod and not Manny Rameriz? Can’t be how did the writers get along with a player, voted Bonds MVP 7 times by the writers proves that they either liked him a lot or Steroids didn’t matter.
Ortiz was 1st time ballot inducted. Really? Time for a special section in the Hall for Steroid generation players. I have taken 3 calls already with my son, grandson and a friend that are surprised by this. My son thinks Baseball is going on an unstoppable downhill run. Grandson said to me “Grampa, maybe he didn’t do steroids”.
East Coast Bias at it’s finest.
Ortiz played nice with the baseball press. Bonds did not. Therefore they like Ortiz, but not Bonds.
Also, time. The steroid controversy has mostly died down, and the younger generation of writers is all, “who gives a damn?”.
The HoF is now a joke. Ortiz in on first ballot while Clemons and Bonds fall off the ballot.
It has become the East Coast baseball writers popularity contest. One dimensional, roid user, Big Flappi, a first ballot hall of famer? Yeeeesh.
I’m not really into guessing who was and who wasn’t doing PEDs. I tend to agree with Jay Jaffe that the pre-testing era is just too hard to draw conclusions from. I also know that players of earlier generations regularly used amphetamines as PEDs. Those fall into the same legal mess as steroids at least prior to the MLB testing regime. (They were illegal without a prescription and contributed to enhancing performance). In Ball Four, Jim Bouton talks about greenies (as amphetamines were known) being rampant in clubhouses in the 60s. Once MLB made it clear what the penalties were, I have no problems (so Palmeiro, Manny, and A-Rod being left out is fine with me).
My issue with Ortiz is that he just wasn’t that great considering he was only a DH. Gary Sheffield, who had his own PED experience (his case is a bit more complex), was a better hitter than Ortiz. Sheffield was worth more runs with the bat (including having a higher peak) and was a better baserunner. Both FanGraphs and BB-Ref give Ortiz more defensive value (even though Sheffield actually played a defensive position).
Ortiz was much more popular and charismatic, but my point is that if I can make a good claim that Gary Sheffield (who is getting very little Hall support) was a better hitter than a lifetime DH like Ortiz, then we should really be questioning the merits of Ortiz’s candidacy.
Very good piece. You make a very strong and detailed case. And I totally agree with your conclusions. One may ask “why” will Ortiz be inducted in the face of the facts. I would respond that unlike the infamous cheaters (Sosa, McGwire, Bonds) with Big Pappi it is not universally known that he cheated. Yes, the info is out there and most informed baseball fans know the truth, but alot of MLB fans are not aware of his record, I suspect.
More importantly, Ortiz played the majority of his career for and made his name with one of MLB’s two most cherished and protected legacy franchises, that is of course the stinking Red Sox. The other key point is that David Ortiz was loved by fans (mostly his own) and media. He was seen as kind of a big, cuddly Teddy Bear. I would call him a “cheating Teddy Bear” if one is forced to adopt the cuddly image.
Your point about him being a “one trick pony” is right on the money. No defense. No baserunning. And he definitely did not possess the acumen and game intelligence that someone like A-Rod did. In short, he does not belong in the Hall.
Of all of the “steroid” players the only one I would vote for would be Bonds simply because he was already an MVP and the best player in baseball prior to using. I know we disagreed a little about when Bonds likely began using, but the physical changes so characteristic of heavy steroid use were essentially not present during the Pirate years. My argument would be that his Pirate years make him borderline Hall worthy if not in. He was a two time MVP there and led the league in Slugging twice and in OBP twice while in Pittsburgh. More importantly, he was certainly the best all-around player in the game during his later years with the Pirates. The only legit argument for someone better at that time would be Rickey Henderson.
In conclusion, for Bonds I would say if the counting stats were not enough in Pittsburgh what he did do is dominate the sport. One of the key questions for me personally is “Was the player ever the best player in the sport?” Even if just for two years, or even one. And for Bonds, as much as I dislike him as a person, I do have to acknowledge that as a Pirate he was the best player in the game and was dominant at least for a 2-3 year period there.
Keep in mind on the Bonds “disagreement” I’m the only one I’ve seen throw out a case that his use began in Pittsburgh. At least to my knowledge. And I know I might be dead wrong there.
The physical changes definitely happened in SF.
The change occurred the year after McGwire/Sosa blasted away the HR record. The next year Bonds showed up at Spring Training looking like a comic book character.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. While Bonds was one of the greatest players before PED’s and maybe the greatest players ever. He still did something so egregious as to hurt the integrity of the game as well as the players around him. Like Pete Rose I say “No” to him. BTW, Pete was my favorite player growing up in baseball but when I saw the news I though, “Say it ain’t so!” which he did but I’m not even close to believing him.
100% Jeff!
True^
I have another take on it. Selig was elected into the hall and knew it was going on and actually encouraged it through his silence. Let them all in that deserve it on the numbers – but to me they need the Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod type numbers – Big Papi would be close. Schilling not being in is comical though.
Never should cheaters be rewarded, bad enough that they cheated fans out of hard-earned big money contracts.
Fans seemed pretty happy watching the ball get thrown 100 mph then hit 500 feet. Attendance boomed thanks to Sosa and Big Mac.
They cheated the guys who played the game the right way. They cheated the sacred records.
And the Sosa vs. Big Mac thing is WHY Selig let it go for so long. MLB was suffering after the 94 strike. Until the Sosa/Mac HR race, fans were not coming back. Ironically, PEDs may have saved baseball.
Bill James had some formula he used to predict major league stats based on minor league numbers. We need some reverse formula to dial back the steroid era. My quick off-the-cuff thinking is that PED HRs can be reasonably estimated at 2/3rds the total. So Bonds’ 73 would be 48 or 49, McGwire’s 70 would be 46 or so.
If we take 1998 as the first year Bonds did steroids then instead of numbers like 49, 73, 46, 45, 45 we’d have 33, 49, 31, 31 and 30. He would still have ended with approximately 635 career HRs. Unfortunately it doesn’t take his age-defying last few years into consideration. But it probably wouldn’t have been too far off of that 635.
Ortiz had 58 HRs when he tested positive, then hit another 483. At the 2/3rds rate those 483 become 322, added to his earlier 58 that’s 380. A normal age decline would probably drop him closer to 360.
Bonds, at somewhere between 620 and 635 would be right up there, near Griffey and a little below Mays. Ortiz at 360 is about the same as Yogi Berra….or Ellis Burks.
Very cool.
And Bonds was a good all around player when he was younger. He covered plenty of ground in left, stole bases, and helped his team win in a myriad of ways.
Ortiz never did that.
The whole steroid era is in question. So do you keep all players from that era out of the Hall – basically a presumptive use? Pitchers during that era were using heavily. We really don’t know the half of it. If most were cheating (which I believe they were) the.n technically 15-20 years of players should be excluded.
So how about a section of the Hall dedicated to the steroid era and it’s best players. They can still be honored but separately from the other players.
I’ve long liked that idea. Problem here is Ortiz didn’t play in the steroid era. He played in the testing era.
Expand the parameters to include the testing era. And Big Papi’s career did include the steroid era right? He was playing in 2001.
By my rough calculations, big poopy played 1/4 of his career in the steroid era. That would make him a steroid era player IMO.
Of course I still don’t buy Ortiz’s story of how/ why he got shot in the DR either.
Nor do I. But if Big 💩 had died, it probably would have helped his Hall of Fame voting even more. So maybe he planned it?
I don’t think he planned it, I just think he was involved in some sort of business that maybe he should not have been. Whether it was salacious or possibly “less than legal”, he was targeted.
Or perhaps he was involved with a wife or girlfriend of a person who was shady.
I agree, I think there’s more to the story. There always is with him.
No to all the PED cheats.
I understand that platform. I also understand the argument to include Bonds, Sosa, Clemens as they were the absolute best of their era and steroids were a part of it.
What is indefensible is to say that far greater players are excluded for using PEDs but Ortiz is in for using PED’s.
No Steroid user either suspected or proven should be inducted into the MLBHOF period. Yes, I am aware that some are in now. Ortiz will make a joke of the Hall.
Yeah, I have my doubts about Ivan Rodriguez, Mike Piazza and Rickey Henderson (I’m probably alone on that one but look at his lack of age curve after playing with Canseco), and Bagwell.
There is absolutely no doubt with Ortiz.
IRod was mentioned in Canseco’s book, yes, I am aware that does not make him guilty but birds of a feather. No doubt about Piazza, it is close to impossible to bulk up that fast without steroids. Plus, his head size like Barry increased by more than just ego. While I think the jury maybe out on Rickey, he did overlap with Canseco on A’s roster.
I’ve always wondered about Henderson and was very sure about Piazza, I loved Henderson and was a fan of Piazza, but I suppose it’s difficult to see who, when or how often they used. I suppose that’s why we leave it up to a vote instead of just drawing a blurry line and wondering. I suppose it’s one of the things about baseball I love, that we can get together, talk and see different points of view. I personally think the integrity of the game is at stake and without really studying it, I would vote for Henderson but no one else comes to mind that is linked to use at all. I think of the HoF as a sacred ground. Although, I really hate the Yankees so seeing a Red Sox get in would be fun. I’d say yes to Schilling also, but I understand why it’s a No from others.