Jeremy, first, Ortiz didn’t take steroids, and second, your argument and examples for the fact he did, suck.
David Ortiz at Baseball Reference
Ortiz’s power did not suddenly appear. He was a part-time player on the Twins, a team that undervalued his skills and mis-used his abilities. They wanted him to be a 1B with power. In 2001 he played in 89 games and had 18 dingers, that pans out over a season to over 30 home runs, then in 2002 in 125 games he had 20 dingers, again close to 30+ over a whole season. So 2001-2007, about 30+ HRs a year if he played full time. You can call that a PED fueled power explosion, I call it the growth of a MLB player’s talent.
The Sox, as I am sure some other teams did, looked at him and said:
“Geez that guy looks like a power hitting DH, if we could just teach him some plate discipline and get him some ABs I wonder?”
Well the Sox did just that, they put him in a lineup of hitters, the 2003 Red Sox, who were OBP/Plate Discipline machines, Bill Mueller Where Ya AT!!! Coupled with the emergence of the 2nd greatest 3-4 hitters of all time in Manny/Ortiz and you had a person whose talents and abilities were utilized in the right place at the right time.
Or, for some reason, he started juicing in 2003 when the PED shit hit the fan and continued well into the years of heavy testing. I am sure that’s what happened. I am sure the small sample of facts I dug up in 5 minutes showing , in fact, that David Ortiz career wise was on pace to be a HR machine, pale in comparison to your use of Luis Gonzalez, you misspelled that by the way. Gonzalez is the anomaly with his 50+ HR season, because there was no prior reason for him to have that power explosion. David Ortiz was built and trained to become the hitter he did, not because of steroids. Throw around bullshit all you want but a quick look at Baseball Reference goes a long way too.
Ortiz was the best there was for a 5 season stretch, if that is over that sucks and I will be sad, I do feel like the Large Father has some more mango salsa left in the bowl and will show us why us Sox Fans believe in him.
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I miss that mango salsa commercial; it was one of my favorite things about living in Boston.
You’re probably right, and I hope so. I’m just saying it would be irresponsible not to consider PEDs a possibility with Ortiz. I have been known to be full of shit though.