Guess you missed the playoffs over the last decade-plus then.

Barring a career ending collapse starting basically opening day pedroia is a lock hall of famer

Ortiz obviously is too

Also while Ortiz is going into the HOF it's clearly more narrative based than merit based

Examples of narrative based reasoning will include:

Still love you GW

Lol at Pedroia being a lock and LOL at Papi not being a lock. Yes, being famous for playoff heroics helps get you in the Hall of Fame.

Other examples of narrative based reasoning will include:

Yeah there are a lot of narratives of Ortiz's heroics. that is why he will easily get in the hall of fame and have earned it.

Sounds reasonable!

Pope, I want to hear your feelings and perhaps background regarding the HOF. I notice whenever the topic is brought up you have passionate opinions, whereas for as much as I love baseball, the ballots and whatnot aren't really on my radar.

And why the hell do you think Ortiz isn't a lock?

Pedroia's going to finish his career as a 60 WAR player and has the massively added bonus of an MVP and being a scrappy beloved career red sock

In what world is he not getting into the HOF?

Hey dad, why didn't Ortiz hall of fame?

Because Son, his win adjusted rate wasn't that high and he plays DH.

What about all those clutch hits that led to multiple world series wins?

Those are just narratives son.

I mean, my personal feeling is that narrative counts and Ortiz did enough without it (mostly because I don't like the way WAR penalizes DHs and choose to ignore it). Regardless though, I think it's pretty clear that in the view of the electorate, narrative and personality absolutely count, and if we're discussing whether or not the man's automative, that's the metric that counts.

Yeah, seriously looking at his playoff numbers are pretty much identical to his career numbers, and if anything if you look at the range of seasons he made the playoffs and then pulled his regular season numbers from that exact range (basically excluded the Minnesota years) his playoff numbers are actually slightly worse than his regular season numbers.

But the couple years that Boston won, Ortiz had big numbers so there is your random narrative. He also had poor postseasons in other years where Boston didn't do anything.

It's a chicken/egg thing. If a team goes on a postseason run, it is usually because some players are having big postseasons in the super small sample. That doesn't make said player expertly clutch. It's a small sample, nothing more.

I mean, look at this amazing clutch postseason numbers for David Ortiz!!!!



Fooled by randomness yet again!

I will say, one issue I've had with coverage of the HoF ballot this year is that guys like Jonah Keri keep quoting Value as if this is the MVP discussion (usually in reference to the closers on the ballot). I think value is a big part of the HoF discussion, but certainly not the only aspect and the way value discussions ignore postseason entirely makes them pretty damn stupid.

You understand that having the same numbers against superior postseason pitching staffs is actually better, right?

And, yes, Ill grant some elements of randomness, but we're not building a Hall case on projection, but on what the man actually did. Regardless of whether there was randomness, he's the guy who came through when the Red Sox won their first title in 88 years, a huge narrative (everybody drink!) and you can't completely discredit the fact he was.

WAR sure as hell doesn't penalize DHs. It would penalize him so much more if he had to play 1B everyday.

Are you going to mention those times he hit sub .200 and the Red Sox didn't win at least in part cuz of that? Probably not I imagine

Or the fact that Manny Ramirez (who has no chance at the HOF) was the WS MVP of the first WS in almost a century? Doubt it

Ortiz had 3 undeniably great postseasons, 3 undeniably terrible ones, and the rest were too short to matter

You're wrong on that. It's brutal to DHs, penalizing them for a lack of defense in a game whose rules allow for a non-defensive player.

Again, not playing defense hurts their value, but my feeling is that HoF should be about excellence before value. There's no doubt that amongst those paid to do what Ortiz was paid to do (hit), he was a true great. Narrative is a nice bonus.

I mean, Mo only had 39.7 fWAR. You leaving him out?

As it should be. Ortiz never started an NL game. What kind of nonsense is that?

Might as well punish pitchers for their abysmal hitting then.

The difference being there are 15 MLB teams Ortiz is by default too terrible to play on

Ya, I think DHs should not get penalized as much as they do in the view of the voter for the seasons you say.

Why would I? When they show Jordan hitting the shot over Elo, they don't mention he has missed game winners too.

hes an obvious hall of famer. You know it. I know it, Everybody knows it. believe me

Seems like a perfect time for me to post "narratives"

Oh, it's close. If Pedroia was tall and not ugly I'd agree with you.