A LAST SEASON FOR THE AGES
Unlike most older stars, Ortiz not going quietly
David Ortiz is no stranger to making history, to the point he may have numbed even the most sensitive baseball fans in New England.
Papi went deep again? Yawn.
No. 34 passed Mickey Mantle on the all-time home run list? Snooze.
With Ortiz, even historic production can, at times, seem routine.
Until you look through the history books.
What he’s doing in 2016 isn’t routine. It is far from it. People who are 40 years old aren’t supposed to be playing baseball this well. They aren’t supposed to be belting home runs at Ortiz’ rate or hitting better than .300.
Especially not when the average age in MLB is skewing younger and younger at a relentless pace.
On Opening Day in 2015, the average age of a major leaguer was 29.1 years. One year later, the Opening Day average age was 28.6. As of Thursday, it was down to 27.97.
At the All-Star Game in July, Ortiz was the oldest player in the American League starting lineup. The next-oldest starter was 26.
“It’s hard to play baseball when you’re 40,” Ortiz said. “Especially when you’re looking around and everybody is 20.”
Therein lies Ortiz’ motivation for calling this year his final one. Older players tend to get fewer opportunities, with many teams choosing to take chances on younger, often more athletic — and cheaper — players as the game places a bigger emphasis on quality defense at every position.
As you start to survey Ortiz’s historic numbers this season, and compare them to what even the most amazing 40-year-olds have done in MLB history, there is one disclaimer: Ortiz doesn’t have to play defense. He played first base just once this season. All he has to do is hit. Now, to the numbers. It starts with the power. With 38 homers entering the last two games of the regular season, Ortiz is just the second 40-and-over player in history to pass the 30-homer marker. The only other to do it? Darrell Evans, who hit 34 with the Detroit Tigers in 1987.
Even if you lower the mark to 25 homers, only eight previous 40-and-over players reached that number. And only two of them did so while hitting above .290: Ted Williams, who hit .316 with 29 homers at age 41 in 1960, and Harold Baines, who hit .312 with 25 homers in 1999.
All right, so we know Ortiz can hit long balls with the best of them. But how about his average?
Entering yesterday, he was hitting .316, the eighthbest average for a 40-yearold who qualified for the batting title in history. Only eight players of that age have ever hit .300 while accumulating enough at-bats to qualify for a batting title, and none of them hit as many as 20 homers. The list is short: Rickey Henderson (1999), Paul Molitor (1997), Pete Rose (1981), Stan Musial (1962), Luke Appling (1947-49), Johnny Cooney (1941), Sam Rice (1930-32) and Ty Cobb (1927).
Here’s one more number to crunch, the new gold standard of offensive statistics, OPS. Ortiz’ mark of 1.027 as of yesterday is the highest for a 40-and-over hitter. Even if you lower the age to 37, the list of players to match that number are some of the best-ever: Williams, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Tris Speaker and Cobb.
According to Elias, Ortiz had, as of yesterday, also set single-season records for players 40 or older with 48 doubles, 86 extra-base hits and 127 RBI.
Meanwhile, he was leading the league (players of all ages) in doubles, slugging percentage (.625) and OPS (1.027).
Fine. Forget about age for a second. Just look around at other players’ final seasons before retirement, and here’s the stat that most people tend to remember: Ortiz is having the best final season ever by measure of home runs (Dave Kingman hit 35 in 1986) and RBI (“Shoeless” Joe Jackson had 123 RBIin 1920). A league of his own
How does Ortiz feel about all these accomplishments?
“Age is just a number,” he said last week. “Forty is the new 20.”
He also added a disclaimer, in respect to those who came before him.
“People sometimes want to talk about the era of baseball compared to when they played and the era of baseball right now,” he said. “I always tell people that it’s not fair to make those comparisons because what we have right now they didn’t have back then. Life was what it was back then. Nobody can replace that. We have to feel happy and glad we have everything we have going on in baseball today. It is what it is. Those guys did some special things for the game, and the reason why we’re playing today is because of what they did back then.”
Fair enough, Papi, let’s change the conversation topic to the baseball era you played in.
None of the last five position players to get inducted
into the Hall of Fame hit more than 10 homers in their final seasons. Ranked by OPS+, Craig Biggio (.251, 10 homers), Mike Piazza (.275, eight homers) and Ken Griffey Jr. (.184, zero homers) posted their worst seasons in their final year. Frank Thomas — who, it should be noted, spent his final years mostly as a DH — had his second-worst season, hitting .240 with eight homers. Barry Larkin was the lone exception, posting his sixth-worst season while hitting .289 with eight homers.
Yes, even the best had final seasons that did not come close to matching Ortiz.
“When I started playing baseball, I wasn’t expecting all this,” Ortiz said. “I was expecting just to have a good career and put my family in a better situation because of where I come from. Then everything happened.”
And it’ll all be recorded. His name is entrenched in baseball history.