Belichick Not Elected to Hall of Fame | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Belichick Not Elected to Hall of Fame

HuskyHawk said:
Ortiz passed a lot of tests and was still great. He sure as hell never had the body of a guy on juice. I ignore the steroid era. Bonds and Clemens both did more than enough long before PEDS. Our own local boy Jeff Bagwell never got caught, but there's really no doubt. I suspect 2/3 of MLB was on juice in that era and if you weren't maybe you couldn't compete. Nomar on the cover of SS? As a Sox fan I have to admit, probably.

I think part of what happened in baseball is that certain guys discovered modern training methods and legitimately busted their butts. Suddenly, a league full of guys who didn't pay enough attention to it needed to catch up. Now these guys work out from middle school on and it doesn't really matter anymore. Baseball players have never been more ripped. Adrolis Chapman without a shirt is shocking. This is a pitcher? I remember David Wells.
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I'll go there... You know who else passed ALL the tests? Bonds and Clemens, and others... The immediate response is always that Papi was tested blah blah blah. The best "users" in the steroid era never failed tests.

As far as the body? The dude got pretty damn big pretty quickly from Minn to Boston, and the obvious collection of users around him certainly creates a lot of smoke for me. In retrospect, we all should have believed Canseco and observed how everywhere he went, there was a steroid culture.
 
The defense of Ortiz and steroid use is absolutely ridiculous. He played consistently from 2000 to 2016, the heart of the steroid era. His body frame changed dramatically and he was estimated by teammates to be 255-260 lbs at one point bench pressing 400 lbs.

His power numbers had a 3 year spike:

2000-2003 HRs: 10-18-20-31
2004-2006 HRs: 41-47-54
2007-2011 HRs: 35-23-28-32-29

The congressional hearings and Mitchell report happened between 2005-2007.

Any argument that "well, he never got caught" is pretty much a blatant admission of guilt on your part if you take that stance.
 
I'm not saying he didn't take anything, or that Ortiz is clean beyond any doubt, but that doesn't mean the allegations aren't suspect at best. What did Ortiz allegedly take? Even Rob Manfred stated that the 2003 test results had "legitimate scientific questions" and that some positives could have been triggered by legal, over-the-counter supplements.

Ortiz was radically inconsistent before 2003. He was a dead pull power hitter with a massive hole in his swing known to virtually every pitcher in the American League. If he were so consistent, the Twins would not have released him after 2002. He probably would have signed on somewhere by Spring Training, but he had virtually no prospects until he met up with Pedro in the Dominican Republic. Even in '03, he was a spot player, before settling in as the D.H. in the second half of the season. He even requested a trade because he wasn't happy with how he was being used. He was a "nobody" back then, which was not the case in 2009 when the report was made public and the NYT could make a headline with his name.

His consistency came when he fixed the hole, focused on hitting to all fields, and accepted the fact that his days at 1st would be fewer and farther between going forward.

Finally, Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame, which shows how much credence the baseball writers gave the 2003 report.
 
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Husky25 said:
I'm not saying he didn't take anything, or that Ortiz is clean beyond any doubt, but that doesn't mean the allegations aren't suspect at best. What did Ortiz allegedly take? Even Rob Manfred stated that the 2003 test results had "legitimate scientific questions" and that some positives could have been triggered by legal, over-the-counter supplements.

Ortiz was radically inconsistent before 2003. He was a dead pull power hitter with a massive hole in his swing known to virtually every pitcher in the American League. If he were so consistent, the Twins would not have released him after 2002. He probably would have signed on somewhere by Spring Training, but he had virtually no prospects until he met up with Pedro in the Dominican Republic. Even in '03, he was a spot player, before settling in as the Dan Hurley in the second half of the season. He even requested a trade because he wasn't happy with how he was being used. He was a "nobody" back then, which was not the case in 2009 when the report was made public and the NYT could make a headline with his name.

His consistency came when he fixed the hole, focused on hitting to all fields, and accepted the fact that his days at 1st would be fewer and farther between going forward.

Finally, Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame, which shows how much credence the baseball writers gave the 2003 report.
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No offense......"fixing the hole in his swing", "over the counter legal supplements" and not playing 1b all sound like complete BS.
 
.-.
Deepster said:
No offense......"fixing the hole in his swing", "over the counter legal supplements" and not playing 1b all sound like complete BS.
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Could be. Then again, maybe not.
 
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