I was aware they were CAUGHT at different times, of course.
Manny violated a collectively bargained list of specific banned substances. And then he did it again. Ortiz may or may not have violated an unspecific unenforced memo in testing that was agreed to be secret. I understand there isn’t a lot of nuisance to these conversation, but it is absurd to consider these the same thing. You want to compare Ortiz to Sheffield you would have case but there are obvious valid reasons Manny is treated differently.
I had also hoped that after 18 years where steroid violators came in all shapes and stat lines, we would stop with nonsense that we can tell violators by appearance, but here we still are. And even if he perhaps took steroids, I think Ortiz does just fine on the character score. I’d much rather celebrate someone like say McGwire who has done a lot of charity work and probably took steroids at least part to get healthy to help his team, then the numerous candidates with a history of domestic violence (hey look there is Manny again) or drunk driving.
Yeah, basically what those guys said but I would note that Ortiz did not appear on the Mitchell report. His name was leaked by the New York Times in 2009 as an “anonymous” positive test from 2003.
The source for him using doesn’t change the fact he was using, and desperate hair-splitting doesn’t change that. It’s a colossal joke that he’s in and Bonds is not, just as bad as the ridiculous friend selections like Harold Baines or the Frisch bunch. Maybe worse; at least the Harold Baineses and George Kellys weren’t accompanied by incredibly hypocritical moralizing arguments.
No, the evidence for that isn’t nearly as strong as you keep saying.
To me, there’s one number that matters more than anything else. Sure, WAR is one measure and going on that, ARod was much better than Ortiz. However, even as a baseball fan and WAR being around for years, I still don’t know how it’s calculated and couldn’t if I was given all a player’s numbers.
OPS and OPS+ on the other hand I can calculate and I understand the stat. It has also been shown to be very correlated to winning teams. When you compare ARod and Ortiz, they are identical, actually Ortiz ahead in OPS+ in his career by one point. Their slugging is identical with Ortiz having a two point advantage.
If Rodriguez should be in the Hall - and I believe he should solely based on his results - then so should Big Papi.
Even dismissing WAR wouldn’t leave OPS and OPS+ as the only stats that you understand.
Do you understand stolen bases? Do you understand fielding?
That’s a couple of things right there that you presumably understand and which favor ARod by a big margin, but are not included in OPS.
OPS+ is one number that summarizes a player’s hitting value. That’s why I like it. It’s not perfect as it doesn’t include stolen bases but correlates well with scoring runs. Fielding is harder to quantify but I agree with you that as a shortstop, ARod had added value beyond his hitting.
Well… okay, but concentrating on OPS+ to the exclusion of everything else is taking this to a REALLY extreme level.
Look, never mind WAR. It’s a rough approximation stat. Let me just point two things out:
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Alex Rodriguez played substantially more games than Big Papi, more than two full seasons’ worth of games. His career was about one sixth longer.
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He was an infielder, and he was very good at it.
The value of a really good defensive shortstop and third baseman over a REALLY long career is enormous. It’s just huge. A-Rod played more games at hard defensive positions than Ortiz played games. Defense matters; Ozzie Smith had a lower OPS+ than Joe Carter, but you don’t really believe Joe Carter was a better player, surely? I’m a Blue Jays fan but I would have traded two Joe Carters and their families for one Ozzie Smith. Shannon Stewart (OPS+ 105) was not anywhere near as good a player as Devon White (98) and Omar Vizquel (just 82) was vastly better than Hubie Brooks (100).
Mad props to Big Papi but he wasn’t in the same zip code as A-Rod. He’s a Hall of Famer, but A-Rod is inner circle, one of the 25-30 best players who ever played in MLB.
I absolutely agree with everything RickJay just said. I’ll add another - OPS+ isn’t a counting stat. It levels off as a player trails off at the end of his career, and gives no sense of longevity.
And, related to this: Ortiz played the first 30% of his career seasons, and the first 19% of his career games, with the Twins, where he was a mediocre player. He didn’t break out until he moved to the Red Sox, at age 27; by that same age, Rodriguez had already been among the top three vote-getters for the MVP award three times.