It would be nice to think that the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America's annual Hall of Fame voting can be more than merely symbolic in the bigger picture. Not just because I happen to be a life member, but for reasons I enunciated in a previous essay addressing how to adjust the Hall vote.
Including that we of the IBWAA aren't just a gaggle of bathrobe scribblers. We do have members of the Baseball Writers Association of America among us. But we also have a flock of very dedicated writers who watch baseball and think hard about the game we love, at least as hard as the average "legitimate" reporter/commentator.
We think hard about the Hall of Fame, too. We want to see the worthy get their due. We cringe with everyone else when the less worthy stand at the Cooperstown podium. We lament when the worthy don't get their due. We want to see the Hall of Fame represent genuine greatness, not mere sentiment or a kind of gold or platinum watch.
Our baseball hearts break with anyone else's, too, when we see men on the ballot we thought looked to be Hall of Famers in the making when they first hit the field or the mound only to be waylaid for assorted sad reasons.
There's sadness enough on this year's Hall ballot. But there's also joy enough. And, additional or recurring controversy enough. That's one, two, three bases, you're in at the old ball game's vote for the game's highest known honor. We of the IBWAA vote only for those on the BBWAA ballot.
More's the pity, because I'd have loved to see us make ourselves known about the Golden Era and Early Baseball Committees' candidates. (Frankly, I'd love to have even a symbolic hand in giving their due to Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Bill Dahlen, John Donaldson, and Tubby Scales. I wish I could have had one in electing Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva to the Hall at long-enough last.)
Following are my Hall votes this time around, and why, symbolic though they are. You may notice no review of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. That's because the IBWAA already "elected" them and thus removed them from our annual ballot. In the real world, of course, neither Bonds nor Clemens are in yet. They're also now on their final real-world BBWAA ballots. (So, for that matter, is Sammy Sosa.)
They're still hobbled by, you know, that stuff with actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances. Never mind that a) they're believed to have indulged during the pre-testing, so-called Wild West PED era of the 1990s/early Aughts; or, b) they had Hall of Fame credentials to burn before the points at which they became suspect.
But on with it. There's only one BBWAA ballot newcomer who got my IBWAA vote, and he just so happens to have been the only one on the current ballot chosen by enough IBWAA voters, as well. He's also likely to be the only player elected to Cooperstown come January 25: David Ortiz.
Big Papi is problematic for one reason only: that anonymous 2003 testing that 1) turned him up positive but 2) was supposed to be anonymous and to determine just how broad a testing program to come should be. And even Commissioner Rob Manfred has said, often enough, that there was enough false positive doubt to remove the taint from him.
Ortiz didn't even know about that anonymously-tested positive for a few years to follow ... and he never flunked a drug test in 13 years once the mandatory testing programs began in earnest not long afterward.
The anti-DH bias doesn't hold anymore, not with Frank Thomas and Edgar Martinez in the Hall of Fame, it doesn't. (Harold Baines, you say? Sorry, that was a Today's Game Committee mistake — a big mistake. Baines was and remains a classic Hall of the Gold Watch player and nothing much more than that. The Today's Game Committee decided to give him the platinum watch of a plaque in Cooperstown. Nobody says I have to agree with it or keep my mouth shut about it.)
But as a designated hitter, especially once he joined the Red Sox, this guy was a wrecking machine. Not given much of a shot with the Twins while they still played at home in the old Metrodome, Ortiz going to the Red Sox got a big boost right out of the chute: he moved from a home "park" that wasn't so great for him to one that was.
He also moved from a team that wasn't as good as the 2003 Red Sox were at putting men on base for him to drive in. He'd given previous hints to what he could do in the postseason; then, in 2004, he damn near became the postseason with what he did to help the Red Sox overthrow the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.
Ortiz helped the Red Sox break the actual or alleged Curse of the Bambino at last and helped them to two more World Series rings before he was finished at last. He was nothing to trifle with in the postseason overall (.289/.404/.543; 17 home runs; .947 OPS) but he was a weapon of mass destruction in the World Series. (.455/.576/.795 in fourteen World Series games; 1.372 OPS; 9 of 20 Series hits going for extra bases, including 3 over the fences.)
Big Papi was must-see everything once he flipped the switch and went from good to great to off the charts at the plate. That's before considering he finished his career with 541 home runs, 1,192 extra base hits total, and 48 percent of his hits going for extra bases overall. He's also one of only three men to finish their careers with 500+ home runs and 600+ doubles: the others are Bonds and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron.
So how does Ortiz stack among the Hall of Fame DHs according to my Real Batting Average metric? (RBA: total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances)?
Frank Thomas — 654
David Ortiz — .637
Edgar Martinez — .609
Harold Baines — .538
HOF DH AVG — .610
Ortiz is only 14 RBA points behind Thomas and 28 points ahead of Martinez, and he's 27 points above the Hall average for DHs. (Yes, that's Baines 72 points below the Hall's DH average — considering those who spent all or the majority of their careers in the role.)
You know something? Yes, let's get it out of the way, since there's been more than a little carping from the anti-DH crowd: Ortiz played 265 games at first base lifetime ... and he wasn't terrible at it.
He didn't have a lot of range, but he was only three points below his league average for fielding percentage, he was only 7 defensive runs saved below the league average, and he had decent hands that enabled him to turn more than a few double plays. We're not exactly talking about the second coming of Dick (Dr. Strangeglove) Stuart here.
But we are talking about the arguable second-greatest full-time DH ever to check in at the plate. We're also talking about a guy who avoided more than a few Red Sox scandals during the heat of his career there (they don't remember Papi Being Papi with due derision) and a guy who could and often did put the entire city on his back when disaster or terrible mass crime struck.
Who can forget This is our [fornicating] city! that Opening Day following the Marathon bombing, launching the Red Sox to their third World Series conquest with Ortiz in the lineup? Just pray that, during his Cooperstown induction speech, Big Papi doesn't surrender to the overwhelming temptation to holler, this is our [fornicating] Hall of Fame!
The Rest of My Votes
For me, they were no-brainers: Todd Helton, Andruw Jones (before his career cratered after leaving Atlanta, he was a Hall of Famer all around — and he still retired as the single most run-preventive defensive center fielder who ever played major league baseball), Jeff Kent, Scott Rolen, Curt Schilling (with prejudice), Gary Sheffield, and Billy Wagner. (Don't laugh: this guy had a lower batting average against him than every relief pitcher who's now in the Hall of Fame, including The Mariano.)
But I'm going to acknowledge that there were some sad cases among the new guys on the ballot for whom I didn't vote. Here they are:
Carl Crawford — On-base and speed machine ground down by injuries, especially when he tried playing through them anyway to avoid certain managers dismissing him as a quitter. He was a great defensive left fielder, too. (+99 runs saved above his league average.) Short enough of a Hall of Famer, but better than you remember him.
Prince Fielder — Finished at 32 thanks to neck injuries and surgery, but he sure looked like a Hall of Famer in the making for a few years with that big incendiary bat, didn't he? I did zap him once in print for a seemingly indifferent take on the Tigers' postseason elimination, but I changed my mind — you'd rather he trashed the clubhouse or wailed about the injustice of it all?
Ryan Howard — Everyone in Philadelphia would love to rewind the tape back to just before Howard's Achilles tendon injury turned him almost overnight from the deadliest of the deadly to a journeyman who still had some pop, but little else in the final five seasons of a 13-year career. No great defensive first baseman, the injury eroded Howard's real ticket to Cooperstown, his thunderous bat.
Tim Lincecum — Won two Cy Young Awards in his first three seasons. The Mike Boddicker of his generation: a smallish guy who pitched big, maybe too big for his size, for a short while, anyway. I've seen Lincecum described as an injury waiting to happen, and that's precisely what he turned out to be: a torn hip labrum turned him into an also-ran. His painful fadeaway was too sad especially because The Freak was extremely likable as a person and known as that kind of teammate, too.
Justin Morneau — Had Hall of Fame talent, won a single American League Most Valuable Player award that he didn't really deserve (going by WAR, Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana probably deserved that 2006 MVP, too, but if you won't give it to pitchers Grady Sizemore among the position players really deserved that year's MVP), and was done in gradually but surely by a few too many concussions.
Álex Rodríguez — Of course it's sad that a guy who didn't need help to be Hall of Fame-great went for it, anyway. First out of terrible insecurity after signing that mammoth deal with the Rangers; later, out of hubris at minimum. His post-career image-rehabilitation efforts seem six parts laudable and half a dozen parts controversial. (He's criticized at least as often as he's praised.) But it's going to be impossible to forget that — even if there were many compromising issues around baseball's Biogenesis investigation — A-Rod did a splendid enough job compromising himself.
Jimmy Rollins — What Rollins has to sell is speed on the bases and solid shortstop defense. The bad news, part one: his 95 OPS+ (OPS adjusted to all parks, not just his home park) and .330 on-base percentage in the leadoff spot aren't quite what a Hall of Fame leadoff man should have, and he didn't steal enough bases to make himself a Lou Brock-like Hall case. The bad news part two: he's 53rd all-time for defensive runs above his league average--with +38. At minimum, there are 18 men going nowhere near the Hall of Fame who were good for more.
Mark Teixiera — He looked like a Hall of Famer in the making, didn't he? A few too many injuries keep him from pulling up far enough beyond several non-Hall first basemen, but when he was healthy the switch-hitting Teixiera was a genuinely great hitter and a well above-average first baseman.
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