Because admitting use really helped Mark McGwire.
Yes!!!
The moral: Thou shalt not swat.
It likely had more to do with getting away from Tom Kelly and his attempts to make Ortiz a line drive singles hitter.
Given how the Twins were actively trying to screw up his career, I think the major change is just that the Red Sox put him in the lineup and left him alone.
Rolen got 63% of the vote this year with 5 more years to go on the ballot, so he’s got a very solid chance of election. All these guys are pretty interesting, and all benefit from a favorable positional adjustment in their WAR. And for me, they help illustrate how flawed WAR can be. Each of them has a career oWAR very near or higher than David Ortiz, despite all being vastly inferior statistically.
I always have to remind my stat-nerd self that stats – even cool advanced stats like WAR – don’t tell the whole story.
Part of the reason why Ortiz’s career oWAR is low, compared to some of those other guys, in addition to the positional adjustment, is that his first six seasons in MLB, with the Twins, weren’t good (probably for the reasons already described) – his overall oWAR for six seasons in Minnesota was only 3.5. Ortiz didn’t really start hitting the ball well, and producing (reflected by oWAR) until his seventh season, at age 27, when he went to Boston.
They’re vastly inferior statistically if you only count hitting statistics.
I think David Ortiz is a Hall of Famer but I am not convinced he was a better player than Graig Nettles or Lou Whitaker. Dismissing fielding because it’s hard to measure is not a very logical approach to evaluating how great a ballplayer was. Graig Nettles was not a good fielder; he was a FANTASTIC fielder. He saved a lot of runs with his glove.
Neither is looking at advanced statistics and ignoring the importance of a player to a team’s success via timely hitting, emotional support, and even popularity. He had 11 regular season walk off home runs, plus he’s the only player with 2 post-season walk off HRs. Everyone who has more regular season walk-off HRs than him is in the HoF
Ortiz’s timely hitting is a measurable thing. He did have an amazing clutch year in 2005 and deserves credit for that, and for being a very good playoff hitter (albeit not really any better than he normally was.) One must look at the entire picture.
To use another example, explain to me why David Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame but Manny Ramirez isn’t. That’s as close a comparison as you can get because they were literally teammates, and anything good you can say about Ortiz is true of Ramirez and then some. Ramirez was a BETTER hitter than Ortiz.
Manny was one of those guys you have to subtract points from, due to his “fielding.”
Of course, Manny Ramirez could have DHed more for the Red Sox, if only that Ortiz guy wasn’t taking up the slot.
Absolutely. He was a TERRIBLE outfielder. But damn, the guy could hit.
So why did Ortiz get elected while Manny didn’t get 30%? Don’t tell me it’s steroids; Ortiz, we all know, took steroids. It’s that Ortiz was friendly with reporters, and Ramirez was seen as kind of a kook.
And even bad fielders have to contend with the mental and physical grind of playing both sides of the ball. It takes a toll over a 162 game season. Much more so than hanging out in the batting cage, slurping coffee and chilling until your four or five PAs each day.
ETA: Also, I took Ortiz as a given for the Hall. The guy was a game-changer. He made the Boston lineup better, and opposing managers tried to work around him. I would have preferred that he not get the ‘honor’ of first ballot, but whatever. Still, how many times do people have to get fooled? The Cold War Soviet bloc athletes. Ben Johnson, the shot put giants and all of the other track and field wonders. McGwire and Sosa. Lance Armstrong. C’mon, of course he juiced. Plain as day.
There’s a significant difference to being busted multiple times for steroids, and being on a leaked list that was never confirmed to be a positive test.
Did Ortiz use steroids? There’s no way to say No for sure. But you can say that about every player from that era.
No, you really can’t. I’m sure a lot of players tried PEDs without immediate benefit and/or didn’t stick with them long enough to make a difference. Then there are others who became cartoon musclemen and prolonged their careers in the process. Don’t be fooled by Big Papi’s belly…he juiced himself into a cartoon slugger just like McGwire, Sosa and Bonds.
IMO, the evidence presented doesn’t support that level of certainty. It’s possible, sure. It’s certain, nope.
I am stunned that this is your take. I know that you know that Ortiz’s link to PEDs is actually quite weak and that, even if he did use them, it was under wildly different circumstances than Manny.
I’ll say it again for the record, I think Bonds, Clemens, Manny, Sosa, McGwire, ARod, Sheffield, Palmeiro, Pudge Rodriguez and Ortiz all belong in the HOF. But I don’t have to pretend each of their ties to PED use are exactly the same.
How were the circumstances different? They both used them to help them play baseball better.
Ramirez twice tested positive for PEDs well after major changes to MLB’s rules were made, Ortiz showed up on the Mitchell Report for an unspecified substance that could very well have been unrestricted. These are different circumstances, if not “wildly” different.