Jeff Passan on David Ortiz's HOF credentials

I'd have to look it up to check, but I think Frank Thomas was that way as well for much of his career. That said, if you are comparing players with similar production, the position player always deserves to be ahead of the DH and it isn't even close.

 

Most of the people cited here would not have had their career extended if there was a DH. Orlando Cepeda was the DH for the Red Sox in the opening game of 1973 - Ron Bloomberg of the Yankees is remembered as the first DH ever.

Mantle was very injured through most of his career, and his career was extended for his last year or two. He literally had to be taped up to play.

Hank Greenberg and Eddie Mathews are in the Hall of Fame.

Before the Free Agent Era, teams were generally unwilling to pay top dollars to players over 35. Players were not as well conditioned as they are today, because most worked at off-season jobs. Players were generally regarded as finished after they were 35, and players had less incentive to keep playing because the money they would make wasn't that much more than they would make in other fields. In the 1960s, it was rare to see 30-year-old players in Triple-A because teams wouldn't generally keep them around. The Triple A salary was no more than four times what they could make at another job. Today, EVERY player who plays a full season in the major leagues makes more than the President. In the early 60s, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were the only players making $100,000 a year, which is what the US President made.

 

• Sometimes a time frame is just a time frame. I've explained this. You're projecting the "pound of flesh" emotion.
  
• We're not dealing with parents & children here. Or a child's mind, hoping to shape that child's future behavior. If we failed to consider a suspected PED user at all, and made up a bogus reason different from that, that would be unfair. But a player who through one or several factors ends up in the PED orbit still is getting consideration for his career. And if he isn't voted into the Hall, it's for the portfolio he has brought to the voters. Personal accountability for the candidates, who have the control. Voters simply react and some take longer to do their evaluations than others. And I maintain, Cooperstown is no one's "right." It's an honor, an award. Hitchcock had no right to an Oscar and wasn't being punished in not getting one. Enough Academy voters did not believe, in the years in which he made his finest films, that he deserved one. Those voters have to own their decision-making on that, of course.
  
• My adjectives were no more unfair to those who disagree with me than yours ("vindictive") was loaded and unfair to me. You impute motives in my voting process that are incorrect, and I was reminding you that there are other ways of looking at it.
  

 

So, at the very least, you admit that your adjectives were unfair. That is progress, I guess.

The comparison to parenting was an analogy. You called induction into the Hall of Fame a privilege. I gave you an example to illustrate the point that taking away privileges is a form of punishment. Now I notice you moving away from calling it a privilege because you see the flaw in your argument. Players who earned enshrinement in the Hall of Fame with their play on the field and have it taken away are being punished. You can certainly question if they earned it or argue that the punishment is justified, but to argue that it is no punishment at all is intellectually dishonest at best.

I'm not projecting anything. You are expected to decide who deserves enshrinement in the Hall of Fame when you fill out your ballot. Changing your mind later is one thing. Deciding to wait in the hopes that more evidence will come out is a different matter entirely and I believe motivated by the need to punish PED users.

Your argument that players can control "ending up in the PED orbit" is flat-out wrong. They can't control accusations made by others. They can't control voters incorrectly assuming they cheated based on changes in their bodies over the course of their careers or improvements in their performance, both of which could be due to other factors. Players can only choose whether or not to use illegal PEDs. Not everybody who "ends up in the PED orbit" chose to use them, but you are making the faulty assumption that they did.

 

I'm not saying that Sheffield's body of work isn't better than Belle's. It is. The path is going to be the same because he was viewed as a jerk and in Sheff's case, he has the added PED stuff with ties to Bonds.

Plus the ballot he is going to be on is a mess, so I think he is going to get overlooked by a lot of people. He might get to a third ballot, but I'd doubt it.

Sheffield's first year on the ballot is 2015. The other first-timers are Randy Johnson, Pedro and Smoltz. So at best he is fourth in the pecking order for newcomers. In 2016, the first-timers are Griffey, Hoffman and Edmonds, who is a guy people could directly compare to Sheffield's case and pick Edmonds because of what's held against Sheffield

Now how many of these guys are going to get in 2014 -- Maddux, Glavine, Thomas, Mussina, Kent. So they hold over.

And then there is just the general overall ballot holdovers who just cant get off the ballot that people are going to vote for over Sheffield. Just based on WAR, when Sheffield is eligible he is 19th in WAR for guys on the ballot.

 

You sure love to attribute motives to other people, chief. No, I don't "see the flaw" in my own argument. Nothing's changed on that front for me. HOF enshrinement is a privilege that a player who crosses all the t's and dots all the i's -- or enough of them -- can have bestowed upon him. It's not Elite frequent-flier status attained by hitting a threshold.

You can "believe" whatever the hell you want about my choosing to use the waiting period built into the process -- 15 years on top of the initial 5 -- but you happen to continue to be wrong. Your "believing" to the contrary won't make it so. Get over yourself.

And if I believed that everyone who has some suspicion of PED use, or brush with it, or reports of positive tests, or admission of use w/o apparently checking to see what it was they were really using, or any of the other myriad explanations/stories, in fact did use them to knowingly cheat, I'd be done with consideration of those guys. That I'm open to voting for them in subsequent years -- when I know more, when MLB addresses PEDs in different ways, when smoking guns are found or names are cleared or whatever -- is to their benefit. You seem to want voters to wave in anyone who couldn't immediately be indicted by a grand jury, as if we're talking U.S. justice system standards. And as I noted, people seem hung up on the yes/no question as a first-year thing.

We just happen to have another, modern reason to embrace the 15-year period. For the reasons I've laid out and for the reasons you'll continue to attribute to me, springing only from your head.

 

I'm very much a stats-oriented guy, and one who believes that pretty much anyone from the steroids era should be allowed in if they have the stats, but I think your stance is a perfectly reasonable one to take.

 

Can't ask for more than that, sgreenwell. Appreciate.

 

So it just springs from my head that you can't even be honest enough to admit that keeping players out for suspected PED use is a punishment? Taking away a privilege is a form of punishment. That is not an opinion. It is a fact.

I also notice that you didn't even bother to address the point that players can't control whether or not accusations are made about them. Guess you would rather avoid it than admit I'm right.

I'm saying you shouldn't assume guilt unless there is real evidence and that is exactly what you are doing in many cases.

 

More huffin' and puffin', outofplace
You're wrong. I've clearly made my case. And you probably ought to wipe the spittle from the corners of your mouth.

 

Can't handle being proven wrong, so you attack me instead. So predictable.

 

The man in question is now two games away from a World Series MVP award, with a 2.114 OPS this series. As random as the Series MVP can be, it's the kind of resume enhancement that I think will push him over the top.