On Jan. 25, the results of the baseball Hall of Fame voting were officially announced, and Dominican David Ortiz, who qualified for the first time, became the only player to be inducted, and he was also the second in history to serve primarily as a designated hit Hall of Famer.
I believe that the term "Hall of Fame" is not unfamiliar to everyone, and there are Halls of Fame in different sports, different levels and even specific to some teams in the North American sports world. Of the many Halls of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame in CooperTown, New York, has the most demanding selection criteria.
This supreme honor is cast by hundreds of journalists from the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), and all players with 10 seasons of appearances in MLB are eligible to vote after 5 years of retirement, and each candidate receives at least 5% of the votes to stay in the voting pool, up to a maximum of 10 years. If a candidate gets 75 percent of the vote in a given year, he becomes a Hall of Fame player.
The level of detail recorded in baseball sports data provides critics with a very good level of comparability, so the threshold for Cooper Town is extremely high based on the initial inducted members as a reference. Baseball journalists are more than indiscriminate, according to the rules, each person can choose 10 players a year, and the average number of nominations this year is only 7.11.
Credit: James Cogswell, Flickr
Many star players who were once the choice of the moment at their peak, after entering the voting pool, let alone selected, it is difficult to reach the 5% passing line. Many Hall of Famers can't be selected right away, but have to stay for years to get enough favor from journalists.
Since the first selection in 1937, only 135 players have been inducted into the Hall of Fame by BBWAA accreditation to date, and only 58 have been inducted in their first year on the voting pool. Including 2020, there are 8 votes that have not been selected, and it is not uncommon for a single seedling like Otiz to be selected, which is evident in the difficulty of this honor.
Ortiz's major league career started with the Minnesota Twins, and after 6 seasons, the offensive end performed quite well, not a star, at least a qualified major league starter. Defensive ability is more head-scratching, only 26 years old he is not even a regular first baseman, and at a young age he has to occupy the designated hit place.
Perhaps feeling that Otiz had limited potential, the Twins cut him at the end of the 2002 season, and the Boston Red Sox immediately picked him up. If the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in New York that year was the worst operation in team history — the Yankees have won 26 World Series titles since then, and the Red Sox have been under the "Ruth curse" and have been without a crown for many years, then finding Otiz is undoubtedly the best operation in team history.
Here, Ortiz was named an All-Star 10 times, won a Silver Rod Award seven times, raised his career hits to .286/.380/.552, contributed 55.3 victories, and accumulated 541 home runs (17th all-time), 632 second-base runs (12th all-time), and 1768 RBBIs (23rd all-time). There were 10 seasons in which Ortiz broke the 100, and from 2003 to 2007, he was in the top five by consecutive American League MVP votes. Even in his final season at the age of 40, he led the major league for the first time in long-time playing percentage (.620) and attack index (1.021).
More important than the regular season statistics, Otiz is a more typical playoff player, with a high attack index of .947 in 85 playoff games, even higher than his cumulative attack index in the regular season. In the 2004 American League Final, the Red Sox against the Yankees let three chases and four, it was Otiz's key blow to help the team turn over, and then the World Series Red Sox successfully broke the curse and won the World Series championship in 1986.
In 2007 and 2013, Ortiz also used his wonderful performance in October to carry the Red Sox, and in the 2013 World Series he handed over a terrorist strike rate of .688 and won the World Series MVP. There are not many players in history who can have three crowns in hand, and it is even more valuable that each crown has a major contribution.
Speaking of which, friends may feel that Otiz's admission to the Hall of Fame is a foregone conclusion. From a prior perspective, it is not necessary, and even if the same issue was discussed more than a decade ago, there may be many baseball journalists who have reservations.
It all starts with Otiz's position, he is a very typical designated striker with ordinary defensive ability. In order to play the strength of the blow, the team must bind the designated strike to Ortiz, and it is impossible to flexibly dispatch, such as the tactical alignment of left and right play, and the function of the player's rotation is difficult to achieve.
On the other hand, eliminating the defensive task will greatly reduce the burden on the player, for example, when other teammates want to warm up defensively before the game, the designated strike is only prepared for the attack. Specifying strikes in a match also has more time to think about strike strategies without much physical exertion.
In other words, a fixed designated strike is a rather "resource-eating" position, and if it is acceptable for the catcher to have a low offensive output because of the arduous defensive task, then the good performance of the designated strike on the offensive end becomes a matter of course.
Before Otiz, only two Hall of Famers were designated strikes in halftimes, especially with Edgar Martinez having 71.4 percent in 2019. Martinez was originally a very good third baseman, switching to designated strikes is an injury relationship.
Ortiz played 84.2 percent of his 2,408 games as a designated hit, and many of his first-baseman games were played by him during his time in the Twins, when he wasn't a star player.
Martinez's induction into the Hall of Fame was a one-size-fits-all process, with only 36.2 percent of the vote when he first qualified for voting in 2010, and falling to less than 30 percent in the following years, until he was elected to the Hall of Fame with 85.4 percent of the vote in his tenth year.
Seattle Mariners legend Martinez
This dramatic process was due in part to Otiz, and in Martinez's active era, baseball journalists were deeply ingrained in the idea that designated strikes "deserved to be outstanding" and "unfit to enter the Hall of Fame." Ortiz's good performances, especially his old-fashioned play in his final season, changed the minds of journalists.
Martinez, whose career win contribution of 68.4 was a designated hit, was slightly better than Ortiz, and reporters suddenly discovered that the seattle Mariners' lifelong formidable batterer was fully qualified for the Hall of Fame.
Finally, Martinez managed to press the whistle into the selection, which also paved the way for Otiz to follow him into Cooper Town. From the tenth year to the first year, the two teamed up to change the status and positioning of designated strikes in baseball, which also demonstrated the openness of baseball to evolution and new ideas in the ancient sport.
Otiz said in an interview: "I am the kind of player who I know myself to have talent, and what I seek is to be able to play every day and show myself. Thank God, at some point in my career this became a reality, and when I became a member of the Red Sox, everything made sense. I cherish this opportunity and I am very fortunate to be able to achieve it all. ”
Finally, congratulations again to Dad for his induction into the Hall of Fame! In the comments section, tell us about the famous scene of your father in your impression!