Is David Ortiz a Hall of Famer?

With another set of post-season heroics in the rear view mirror, Hall of Fame buzz is beginning to swirl around David Ortiz. At 38, Big Papi delivered his best season since '07, with a .959 OPS in 137 games. Since joining the Red Sox in '03, Big Papi has authored a .292/.390/.572 resume with 373 home runs and an offensive record 48% above league average. That includes 2008-09 when a wrist injury hampered his swing and sapped his power; absent those two seasons he's raking at 55% above average. That Coopestownish.

The major Hall of Fame problem for Ortiz is that his career did not start with Boston in '03. In his first six years with the Twins, he hit just .266 with 58 homers. There was no Big and no Papi until he landed in the Bay state and began mashing behind Manny Ramirez. Ortiz has performed at a Hall of Fame level with the bat over an 11-year period, but that's not long enough and it's not the entirety of his playing career.

There's another barrier to a bronze bust for Ortiz: he's a DH. You will hear and read irrelevant analysis about how a DH doesn't belong in the Hall or about how no DH has ever been elected. Neither is the point. Cooperstown has a long history of enshrinement of one-dimensional players, in case you mistook Harmon Killebrew for  a speed merchant (19 of 37 steals in 22 years) and defensive wizard (19 career wins below replacement with the glove). 

The problem with rostering a player who can only DH is that it has an inherent negative effect on team construction. The various sabermetric measuring systems assess this against a player's defense, but the restrictions such a player imposes on lineup flexibility may accrue to offense instead or as well. Between his lack of range when he donned his mitt and the lack of managerial range created by carrying a non-fielder on the roster, Ortiz has cost his teams 18 wins over his career. That offsets a goodly chunk of his overall value.

There are four widely-used systems designed to predict a player's Hall of Fame case. Three of them say Ortiz has a fair amount of work to do. For example, the average Hall of Fame first baseman leads the league in 27 seasonal categories over the course of his career. Papi has led the AL in home runs once, RBIs twice, walks twice, OBP once and total bases once, well short of that standard. The JAWS Hall of Fame valuation model, which compares a player's value to the average Haller at his position (Ortiz is considered a first baseman since there are no DHs to whom we can compare him) suggests Ortiz is well short in both his peak and his overall career numbers, by distances he cannot bridge even if he performs well into his 40s.

None of this captures the special character that sparked the speculation to begin with. "Clutch" hitting is a vastly exaggerated notion, but Big Papi delivers in key situations so relentlessly there can be no denying that he loves the spotlight and thrives on pressure. Recounting all his game-changing home runs in season-altering games would amount to gilding the lily. His .455/.576/.795 line in three triumphant World Series speaks for itself. In addition, his unquestioned leadership was captured exquisitely when he gathered his bearded brethren around him in the dugout in Game 4 of the just concluded championship. It is tempting to assign cause and effect to that confab and the three consecutive victories that turned a 2-1 deficit into a parade.

How do you measure leadership and clutch hitting? What are their value? Are they enough to overcome a career gap of 24 wins against replacement. The answer, for me, is pretty clear: not even close. Big Papi is a great player and a character who will live forever in baseball history, but he hasn't done enough to earn a bust.

On to the elephant in the room: steroids. The New York Times reported that Ortiz was among 100 players who tested positively for steroids in 2003. Ortiz denied he took steroids and the Players Association claims those relatively unsophisticated tests returned false positives for supplement use. For some cynical followers of the game, that's enough to convict a player even though it amounts to nothing.

Others point to the spike in Ortiz big flies from 2004-2006 (40-47-54) at ages 28-30, followed by a dramatic decline to 35 after 2006, never to return. This argument is specious: that's normal career peaking. Indeed, in the four years preceding his home run spike he hit 10-18-20-31. In the four years following his peak, his home run totals declined to 35-23-28-32. He also played more games during the peak than in any other years. 

In other words, there are several good reasons not to elect David Ortiz to the Hall of Fame -- a short peak and bad defense chief among them. There are a couple of good reasons to consider him further -- palpable leadership and clutch hitting that helped propel his team to three more championships in 10 years than they had won in the previous 86. But denying him a bust because of steroids is pure electoral malpractice, on par with electing Ted Cruz or Jesse Jackson Jr. to Congress.

Eighteen Hits of Choke

Luddites in the world of new baseball analysis often complain the statistics can't capture everything in the game, like moving the runner on a ground out or motivating teammates with "intangibles."  While that's true as far as it goes, the newfangled stats like OPS (on base average plus slugging percentage), VORP (value over replacement player) and SIERA (skill-interactive earned run average) capture much of what is unaccounted for by flaccid old stats like batting average, RBIs and pitching wins.

The inter-league rivalry game between the Orioles and Nationals last night provides a great example. Baltimore's first baseman, Derrek Lee, notched a double and four singles in five at bats. Center fielder Adam Jones smacked a double and three singles in five at bats and right fielder Nick Markakis added four more singles. Second baseman Robert Andino pitched in a single and a double and others added safeties, including pitcher Zach Britton and pinch hitter Vlad Guerrero in his only trip to the plate.

The O's batted .419 with their 18 hits ... and plated just four runs in an 8-4 loss.

Batting average just fails to represent enough of what transpired in this game. One important reason for Baltimore's fecklessness is that despite making 43 trips to the plate against six different pitchers, they didn't manage a single walk. Perhaps D.C. pitchers were laying every offering in the strike zone, but more likely, the Orioles need to alter their approach at the plate.

The Nats can take more credit for playing error-free ball in the field and turning a pair of double plays to douse rallies. Geeks and deniers can agree that the Birds' inability to string hits together was also a key contributor to their low run total. Because just three players produced 13 of the team's 18 hits, there wasn't much opportunism up and down the lineup. Indeed, the Orioles left 13 on base. 

Seamheads would call that an unfortunate distribution of results. Change-haters would ascribe psychological characteristics to the two teams, asserting that the Orioles weren't "clutch" or Nationals pitchers "bore down." Research finds there is very little to that. No matter how you measure it, there's little consistency to "clutch hitting" or "choking" among players, and even less among teams. 

Indeed, just the night before, Baltimore left just seven men on base and scored two in the ninth to defeat Toronto. So they're not chokers, just a team whose batting average doesn't tell the whole story. And in that sense, the Baltimore Orioles are every team in baseball.

b

Glaus-ing Over Clutch Hitting

Troy Glaus had a hit and an RBI in five attempts during a 4-1 Atlanta win over Philly today. So he's clutch, right? After all, he got a hit with runners on base in a close game. This is why we revere RBIs; they denote an ability to drive in runs.

Except, as copious research has demonstrated, there's virtually no relationship between RBIs and "hitting in the clutch," almost regardless of how you define it.

RBIs correlate quite highly with RBI opportunities, i.e., players with lots of RBIs tend to bat with lots of guys on base -- in fact, in scoring position. Anytime you see two players with similar production but disparate RBI totals, check your knee-jerk assumption of clutchness at the door and assume instead that one player had many more chances to drive in runs than the other.

Which is how Glaus hooked and reeled in an RBI today. In his five trips to the plate, the bases were stuffed with 11 baserunners -- bases juiced once and two on each of the other four occasions. Glaus whiffed twice and left nine men on base until the ninth, when his shallow outfield poof dropped in and scored a runner from third.

Was Glaus "clutch?" Ha! He almost single-handedly ran the Braves' aground, overcoming the consistent achievements of his fellow batsmen, like Chipper Jones. Jones reached base four out of five trips to the plate, but collected no RBIs. Perhaps he wasn't "clutch,", or perhaps he did exactly what he was supposed to do, and just had fewer opportunities. He stranded a single runner all game.

Ryan Howard, whose gargantuan contract rests in part on his enviable annual RBI totals, left four runners on base in the same game. Batting in that lineup, in the number four position, in that ballpark, with that power, is a perfect RBI storm. Howard can strand four runners here and there, because there will be four more to knock in on other nights.

b