Unlike Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, Ortiz has never officially tested positive for a banned substance. He falls into the same category as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza (and, technically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens), in that the evidence against him is purely circumstantial:
1. A New York Times report in 2009 claimed that Ortiz was one of the 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during "anonymous" survey testing in 2003, before the current testing system was installed. That famous list reportedly also implicates Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa. Not the best company. It doesn't help that Ortiz was Ramirez's teammate for a number of years.
2. Ortiz's OPS with the Minnesota Twins, from 1997 to 2002, was .809. Since joining the Red Sox in 2003, his OPS has been .962.
3. Ortiz looked like toast in 2009, when he got off to a painfully slow start and hit just .238 for the season. It looked like he might retire at the beginning of 2010, when he hit .143 in April as a 34-year old. In the three years since then, he's recovered in a huge way to hit .311/.401/.571.
These are the indicators that the overly-suspicious baseball community has decided upon as the telltale signs of illicit drug use. They're all there: the unsubstantiated reports, the compromised teammates, the quantum leap in production, the late-30s career renaissance. There's far more "evidence" implicating Ortiz than there is against, say, Mike Piazza, and Piazza was rejected by the Hall of Fame voters last year purely based on skepticism and suspicion. For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Ortiz get the same treatment?
Spoiler alert: he won't. Ortiz isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other Hall candidates. And that tells you everything you need to know about how twisted this process has become.
The best illustration of this double standard comes from Jon Heyman, a CBS Sports analyst with a Hall of Fame vote. His Friday column covered Ortiz's case for Cooperstown, and performance-enhancing drugs was one of the key points he addressed. In the past, Heyman has proudly announced his refusal to vote for players even tangentially connected to steroids (not just Bonds and Clemens, but Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza too). So it was good to see the following paragraph, which suggested he would hold Ortiz to the same tough standard to which he has held others:
"Ortiz is no A-Rod, as anyone reasonably can conclude. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either, not without a serious consideration of the facts. With even more accomplished players than Ortiz such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others omitted from Cooperstown to date, it wouldn't be right not to at least consider the case against Ortiz. A great nickname, way with words and penchant for maximizing the moment doesn't win Big Papi a free pass. So the case against must be considered."
Very reasonable. Heyman isn't letting Ortiz's narrative affect his broader evaluative method. He then goes on to acknowledge a few of the links between Ortiz and drugs:
"Ortiz was one of 104 players to fail MLB's 2003 steroid survey test ... Ortiz was a marginal player until he got [to] the Red Sox in his late 20s, then took a giant leap to become Manny Ramirez's co-equal runningmate, and he has remained great even into his late 30s after looking like he might be nearing the end at least a couple different times a half-decade ago ... A giant bear of a man, he once seemed like the nicest guy in the world, but more recently has shown occasional signs of surliness and one classic fit of temper ... He knows Manny well."
It's important to note at this juncture that these are all ridiculous reasons to exclude Ortiz from the Hall. One unconfirmed report, some statistical fluctuation, and "signs of surliness" aren't evidence of drug use. That's not the point here. The point is that Heyman -- a Hall of Fame voter -- has a well-established history of withholding his vote from players who have been loosely connected to drugs. Here, he appears to be willing to apply that tough standard to the eminently-lovable Ortiz. That's what's important -- intellectual consistency. Even if I don't agree with Heyman's Hall standard, at least he's got a philosophy that he wields fairly across the board. In his own words:
"... it isn't necessarily unreasonable to omit Ortiz based on this one serious mistake. Players who took steroids or even laced supplements gained an unfair advantage, and I have never voted for anyone linked to steroids."
Again, I disagree with this position, but it's hard not to respect Heyman for sticking to his ideological guns, even when faced with an appealing baseball character like Ortiz.
Except at the very end of this column, Heyman does a complete about-face that highlights the Ortiz double standard:
"Some Hall of Fame voters will exclude players with any link to steroids, no matter how strong that link is, but in this case it fairly boils down to one un-sourced report involving a test for survey purposes.
Is that enough to exclude? Not here it isn't.
Cooperstown it is."
I mean ... what? After all that, Heyman is endorsing Ortiz for the Hall? Here's how the logic of this column breaks down:
1. I, Jon Heyman, have never voted for anyone linked to steroids.
2. Here is a bunch of evidence linking David Ortiz to steroids.
3. I support David Ortiz for Cooperstown!
So much for a reasonably-applied standard. Heyman's voting principles are now completely compromised. Just a year ago, his official Hall of Fame ballot did not include Jeff Bagwell. It did not include Mike Piazza. Both of those players had twice the careers that Ortiz had, but Heyman did not vote for them because of unconfirmed reports and rumors about their drug use. Yet in Ortiz's case, Heyman is suddenly willing to acknowledge nuance and look past the unconfirmed reports and rumors. This confirms exactly what we have come to expect -- baseball writers aren't making Hall of Fame decisions based on reason and logic and sound criteria. They're voting on narratives and personal biases. Bagwell and Piazza? They never won a championship, did anything memorable, or played for great teams, so they probably used drugs. They're out. Ortiz? He's a fun dude with a cool nickname, some clutch moments, and three titles for a historic franchise, so he probably didn't use drugs. He's in.
This is not David Ortiz's fault. He may very well be a Hall of Famer, and his tenuous connection to drugs should not be a factor when the time comes to make that decision. It is encouraging to see an actual voter like Jon Heyman promoting that view. It would just be great if Heyman could provide other suspected users like Bagwell and Piazza with the same benefit of the doubt that Ortiz has apparently earned.
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There's a second aspect of the Ortiz double standard that isn't drug-related. It has to do with another designated hitter: Edgar Martinez. Martinez has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for four years now, and hasn't yet crossed the 40% threshold, suggesting that his chances of induction aren't good at all. But if Ortiz is now being considered a Hall of Famer, then the voters had better take a second look at Martinez, because the gap between these players is striking.
Martinez had the better slash line (.312/.418/.515), his on-base advantage trumping Ortiz's edge in power (.287/.381/.549). Martinez has the better OPS+ (147 to 138). They have similar career games played and plate appearance totals, yet Baseball Reference has Ortiz's career value at 44.2 WAR and Martinez's at 68.3, thanks in part to Ortiz's forgettable stint with Twins. Both were DHs, but Martinez actually spent less of his time there (74%) than Ortiz (86%). Fangraphs.com grades Ortiz as the inferior baserunner and defender. Martinez actually played some third base, which Ortiz probably can't even do in his own imagination. Granted, Ortiz has the postseason accomplishments, but ... what am I missing here? Until he tacks on a few more seasons of elite production, he can't be considered Martinez's equal.
So how can Jon Heyman support Ortiz for the Hall when he didn't vote for Martinez last year? Well, this is what he wrote about Edgar last January:
"Had that pretty slash line of .312/.418/.515. But since he was mostly a DH, I would have liked a bit more power, longevity or speed. Great, but pretty one-dimensional."
Reading that blurb now is devastatingly ironic considering Heyman's more recent endorsement of Ortiz. If he didn't vote for Martinez because he was a slow and one-dimensional DH without enough longevity, how can he possibly justify a future vote for Ortiz, who's an even-slower and even-more-one-dimensional DH with an even shorter career? Again, it's the same illogical approach discussed above. It clearly doesn't have anything to do with merit. It's because Martinez didn't have an outgoing personality or a badass nickname like "Big Papi" or the good fortune to play for great teams in three World Series. It's about narrative. Baseball writers love narrative -- they write it and promote it for a living -- so it's no surprise that narrative has become the most important means of judging a player's ultimate career value. This is not the objective analysis that baseball -- more rooted in statistics than any other sport -- deserves.
Based on Heyman's voting record with respect to Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Edgar Martinez, there was absolutely no rational reason to expect him to support David Ortiz's candidacy as a one-dimensional DH with connections to performance-enhancing drugs. And yet he still wrote that column endorsing Ortiz. It's just another example of how broken Cooperstown's voting process really is. As long as narrative, not merit, determines its membership, the Hall of Fame's relevance as a record of baseball greatness will be undermined.
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