voting for Papi but not Sosa - - and other inconsistencies

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Rosenthal: Why does David Ortiz have so much more support than Sammy Sosa? Exploring yet another Hall of Fame contradiction
Ken Rosenthal
10-12 minutes

For the latest example of the inconsistencies of Hall of Fame voting, we bring you the question of Sammy Sosa vs. David Ortiz.

This is Sosa’s 10th and final year of eligibility on the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) ballot. It is Ortiz’s first. Their career arcs are similar. Their statistics are Cooperstown-worthy. Their confirmed links to performance-enhancing drugs amount to one reported positive test for each, in what was supposed to be anonymous survey testing in 2003. A test that included at least 10 false positives and did not fully distinguish between certain legal and banned substances, according to commissioner Rob Manfred.

Yet, while Sosa has yet to receive more than 17 percent of the vote, Ortiz figures to eventually reach the 75 percent necessary for induction, perhaps even this year. I voted for Ortiz but still do not vote for Sosa, for reasons that will be explained below. Differences between the two exist, in their eras, their performances, the rules in which they played under. But the wide disparity in their expected vote totals is difficult to justify.

Perception is part of this: Ortiz is the beloved “Big Papi,” while many regard Sosa, fairly or not, as a fraud, a symbol of the Steroid Era. Ortiz also is the stronger candidate. So it’s possible to choose him and not Sosa without invoking the twisted logic that in recent years has made voting for the Hall, an honor writers earn only after 10 years of BBWAA membership, an exercise in increasing futility. The troubling part for me is that I believe allegations of Ortiz’s steroid use are too flimsy for me to withhold my vote, yet I applied a different standard to Sosa even though the known evidence against him is the same.

A year ago, I was so exasperated by my own contradictions and choices of so many candidates of questionable character, I wrote that I was considering no longer voting. Well, I decided to keep at it, accepting that virtually all ballots will include inconsistencies, creating openings for criticism. The process is imperfect. But after 35 years as a baseball writer, I feel I would abandon a certain responsibility if I walked away.

I’m voting for the maximum 10 players, including nine holdovers from my previous ballot — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Jeff Kent, Scott Rolen, Curt Schilling, Gary Sheffield and Billy Wagner. My only new selection is Ortiz, whom I’m substituting for Omar Vizquel. I was particularly haunted about voting for Vizquel last year just weeks after reporting with Katie Strang about allegations of domestic abuse against him. Vizquel since has been sued for sexual harassment by a former minor-league bat boy.

My general philosophy is to pick the best players, excluding character and even performance-enhancing drugs from the equation except when it comes to those confirmed to have violated baseball’s Joint Drug Agreement, which took full effect, with penalties, starting in 2004. Much as some of us might wish otherwise, the Hall is not the Hall of Good Guys, or the Hall of Only Clean Players.

As I detailed last year, my ballot includes a litany of dubious individuals, including two others who faced allegations of domestic abuse, Bonds and Jones. I’m dropping Vizquel, who fell from 52.6 percent in 2020 to 49.1 percent in ‘21, while he remains the subject of active litigation as well as an investigation by Major League Baseball. I still believe Vizquel’s on-field performance warrants induction. But he has five more years on the ballot, and I have no problem hitting pause on his candidacy when I consider 10 others deserving. Frankly, this is the course I should have taken all along.

Alex Rodriguez, who like Ortiz is making his first appearance on the ballot, is another player I excluded, but I did not find that decision to be particularly difficult (full disclosure: I work with both Rodriguez and Ortiz at Fox Sports). There is a difference between players who performed in an era when the league, players’ union and media were not vigilant on the subject of PEDs, and those who were brazen enough to engage in such conduct after the sport took firm action in an attempt to crack down on the problem. Rodriguez fell into both the “before” and “after” categories. He acknowledged using PEDs from 2001 to ’03, then was suspended by MLB for violating not only the sport’s JDA but also its Collective Bargaining Agreement with his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. An arbitrator reduced his initial 211-game suspension for those violations to 162, which to that point was the longest of the steroid-testing era.

Inside and outside the sport, Ortiz has been the subject of speculation about PED use, but in contrast with Rodriguez, there is zero evidence he engaged in doping, outside of the 2003 survey test Manfred cited as inconclusive. Of course, no one knows the extent to which any hitter or pitcher used PEDs, making it impossible to draw conclusions about the impact on any one player’s career. But to me, the comparison between Ortiz and Sosa is more compelling than the one between him and Rodriguez, a proven user.

The results of the 2003 survey testing, in which at least 5 percent of the players tested positive, triggered testing with penalties in ’04. The players had agreed to the survey testing after being promised the results would remain confidential. But the union failed to destroy the results promptly, and government agents seized records and samples as part of the BALCO investigation. In 2009, media leaks revealed that in the survey round, Ortiz, Sosa, Rodriguez and Manny Ramírez all had tested positive.

One difference between Ortiz and Sosa is that the majority of Ortiz’s career took place during the testing era, while the majority of Sosa’s did not. Though testing for PEDs hardly is foolproof, Ortiz played 13 seasons after the program went into effect without testing positive. Sosa, on the other hand, hit 35 homers in ‘04, the first year of testing with penalties, but played only two seasons after that. Unlike Ortiz, he cannot claim that, over a long period of time, he played by the rules.

Neither player, it is worth recalling, was an immediate star. Sosa reached the majors at 20 and was traded twice before he hit 33 homers in 1993, his age 24 season. Ortiz was released by the Twins and produced his first 30-homer season in 2003, his age 27 campaign.

How each developed into a fearsome slugger might be a matter of debate, but between them they hit 1,150 home runs — 609 by Sosa, 541 by Ortiz. Homers, however, are perhaps Sosa’s only edge in a statistical comparison of their offensive profiles. Ortiz’s OPS was 41 percent above league-average when adjusted for league and park factors, while Sosa was 28 percent above. Ortiz also is significantly ahead in walk rate, strikeout rate and win probability added, and his postseason resume included a .947 OPS and MVP honors in the 2004 ALCS and 2013 World Series, one of his three championships with the Red Sox

True, 88 percent of Ortiz’s career plate appearances came as a DH, but Sosa’s defense went from above-average to below once he emerged as an offensive force, all but negating any advantage. Which is not to say Sosa’s candidacy is without merit. His 292 homers from 1998 to 2002 — an average of 58.4 per season — is a major-league record over a five-year span. Using the JAWS metric originated by FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe, he would rank in the middle of the pack among Hall of Fame right fielders. Like Ortiz, Sosa was among the game’s most popular stars during the era in which he competed, elevating the sport.

Why, then, does my ballot include Ortiz and not Sosa? Why didn’t I vote for Sosa from the start?

My answers are perhaps too subjective. Even though I am more forgiving of pre-2004 use, I previously viewed Sosa as more a creation of PEDs than others, similar to Mark McGwire. Sosa’s rival in the 1998 home-run race admitted to using PEDs three years after becoming eligible for the Hall and effectively was punished for it, never receiving more than 23.7 percent of the vote before his 10 years expired. My beliefs about Sosa and McGwire might very well have been correct. But if I’m ignoring Ortiz’s positive result in the 2003 survey test, I should have done the same with Sosa. And at that point, I might have looked at him differently.

My rationale for excluding Sosa one last time is partly strategic. I don’t see him getting enough votes in his final year to even approach 75 percent, so I prefer my votes to go to candidates who stand more of a chance. I could substitute Sosa for say, Helton, who has six years of eligibility remaining, the most of the other players I selected. But at this point, such a maneuver would amount to a hollow gesture, too little, too late.

I strongly object to two of the Hall’s rules restricting voters’ flexibility — the one limiting us to 10 candidates, which has been in place since the Hall’s inception, and the one that reduced the number of years a player can spend on a ballot from 15 to 10, which took effect in 2015, seemingly with the intent of squeezing out players from the Steroid Era as quickly as possible. But I cannot blame the Hall for my decision to exclude Sosa or any other player.

I’ve come to understand that my reasoning occasionally will be flawed, that producing a consistent ballot is almost impossible. I will continue trying to make informed, thoughtful decisions. But Sosa vs. Ortiz is the kind of comparison that gnaws at me, knowing there is not necessarily a right answer.