JAWS and the 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez

The next article is a part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing take a look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Corridor of Fame poll. For an in depth introduction to this 12 months’s poll, and different candidates within the sequence, use the device above; an introduction to JAWS may be discovered right here. For a tentative schedule and an opportunity to fill out a Corridor of Fame poll for our crowdsourcing venture, see right here. All WAR figures seek advice from the Baseball-Reference model until in any other case indicated.

For the previous few election cycles, as a method of finishing my protection of the foremost candidates earlier than the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve been grouping collectively some candidates right into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their circumstances to take a look at older profiles that don’t require a full re-working, as a result of little or no has modified, even close to their voting shares. At the moment, I provide the primary such batch for this cycle, a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for his or her hyperlinks to performance-enhancing medication: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.

Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, each sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. By way of The New York Occasions (Ramirez) and Sports activities Illustrated (Rodriguez), each reportedly failed the supposedly nameless 2003 survey check that decided whether or not such testing can be launched. Had they not pressed their luck additional, each would possibly already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who additionally reportedly failed the survey check. Alas, Ramirez was truly suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his main league profession, although he traveled the globe making comeback makes an attempt. Rodriguez was suspended solely as soon as, nevertheless it was for the whole 2014 season resulting from his involvement within the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth try and evade punishment — a sequence of occasions unparalleled amongst baseball’s PED-linked gamers.

As I’ve famous extra occasions than I can depend over the previous decade and a half, my very own coverage close to such candidates is to distinguish between pre-2004 transgressions and the remainder; whereas I included the likes of Bonds, Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa on my digital and precise ballots, I’ve but to take action for any participant who earned a suspension for PEDs, together with this pair — two gamers who at their finest have been a thrill to observe, however who additionally did a number of the most cringeworthy stuff of any gamers of their period. They and the opposite suspended gamers have been nicely conscious of the results for crossing the road, but did so anyway. Whereas this private coverage started as a ballot-management device at a time after I felt greater than 10 candidates have been worthy of a vote, I’ve discovered it to be an inexpensive midpoint between complete agnosticism on the topic and an entire hard-line stance. My sympathies have a tendency extra in the direction of the previous group — those that refuse to play cop for MLB and the Corridor, reasoning such gamers haven’t been declared ineligible à la Pete Rose — than the latter, however I respect each positions.

Anyway, Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 poll, didn’t surpass that mark till ’20 (28.2%), didn’t prime 30% till ’23 (33.2%), and fell again a fraction of some extent on the ’24 poll (32.5%). That’s eight years to realize lower than 10 proportion factors, which means that he’ll fall off the poll after his tenth 12 months (the 2026 poll).

Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022, barely inched up in ’23 (35.7%), and receded barely in ’24 (34.8%). Provided that Bonds and Clemens topped out within the 65–66% vary in 2022 after which have been handed over by the Modern Baseball Period Committee the next 12 months, no one needs to be holding their breaths for both of those two to get elected anytime quickly, although it is going to be awhile earlier than we cease listening to about them.

Manny Ramirez (32.5% on 2024 poll)

From the 2023 profile intro:

A savant within the batter’s field, Manny Ramirez might be an fool nearly in every single place else — typically amusingly, typically a lot much less so. The Dominican-born slugger, who grew up within the Washington Heights neighborhood of higher Manhattan, stands as one of many biggest hitters of all time, a power-hitting right-handed slugger who spent the higher a part of his 19 seasons (1993–2011) terrorizing pitchers. A 12-time All-Star, Ramirez bashed 555 dwelling runs and helped the Indians and Purple Sox attain two World Sequence apiece, including a report 29 postseason homers alongside the best way. He was the World Sequence MVP for Boston in 2004, when the membership gained its first championship in 86 years.

For all of his prowess with the bat, Ramirez’s lapses — Manny Being Manny — each on and off the sector are legendary. There was the time in 1997 that he “stole” first base, returning to the bag after a profitable steal of second as a result of he thought Jim Thome had fouled off a pitch… the time in 2004 that he inexplicably minimize off middle fielder Johnny Damon‘s relay throw from about 30 toes away, resulting in an inside-the-park dwelling run… the time in 2005 when he disappeared mid-inning to alleviate himself inside Fenway Park’s Inexperienced Monster… the time in 2008 that he high-fived a fan mid-play between catching a fly ball and doubling a runner off first… and a lot extra.

Beneath these typically comedian lapses was an intense work ethic, obvious way back to his highschool days, that allowed Ramirez’s expertise to flourish. However there was additionally a darker facet, one which, significantly after he left the Indians, went past the litany of late arrivals to spring coaching, questionable absences resulting from harm (significantly for the All-Star Sport), and near-annual commerce requests. Most notably, there was his shoving match with 64-year-old Purple Sox touring secretary Jack McCormick in 2008, which prefigured Ramirez’s commerce to the Dodgers that summer time, and a cost of misdemeanor home violence/battery in 2011 after his spouse instructed an emergency operator that her husband had slapped her face, inflicting her to hit her head towards the headboard of the mattress. (That home violence cost was later dropped after his spouse refused to testify.) Interspersed with these two incidents have been a pair of suspensions for performance-enhancing drug use, the second of which ran him out of the majors.

For all the handwringing about PED-tinged candidates on the Corridor of Fame poll over the previous decade, Ramirez was the primary star with precise suspensions on his report to realize eligibility since Rafael Palmeiro in 2011. Like Palmeiro, he has numbers that may in any other case make his enshrinement a lock, and he’s fared higher than his predecessor, not that that’s saying a lot.

Extra right here.

Alex Rodriguez (34.8% on 2024 poll)

From the 2023 profile intro:

Extra so than Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, or Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez is the poster baby for the period of performance-enhancing medication inside baseball. Thought-about “an virtually good prospect” given his mixture of energy, pace, protection, and work ethic, the 6-foot-3 shortstop was chosen by the Mariners with the primary decide of the 1993 draft and reached the majors earlier than his nineteenth birthday. Briefly order, he went on to supply unprecedented energy for the place through six straight seasons of at the least 40 homers, two with at the least 50, and three league leads. Alongside the best way, he signed a 10-year, $252 million cope with the Texas Rangers in January 2001, at that time the most important assured contract in skilled sports activities historical past.

In a significant league profession that spanned from 1994 to 2016, Rodriguez made 14 All-Star groups, gained three MVP awards and two Gold Gloves, and have become simply the fifth participant to succeed in the dual plateaus of three,000 hits and 500 dwelling runs, after Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, and Rafael Palmeiro. Alongside the best way, he helped his groups to 12 postseason appearances, however just one championship. Although he sparkled at occasions within the postseason, he additionally went into some infamous slumps that solely furthered the drama that surrounded him.

All the time with the drama! Rodriguez’s mixture of youthful charisma, success, and cash magnified his each transfer, and his insecurities and incapacity to learn the room assured additional tumult the extra intense issues bought. Due to his proximity to Derek Jeter — first as a pleasant rival inside a trinity of nice younger shortstops that additionally included Nomar Garciaparra, after which as a teammate as soon as the Yankees turned the one membership that might afford his contract — Rodriguez turned a straightforward goal for tabloid-style sensationalism lengthy earlier than he dated Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. His incapacity to get out of his personal method solely intensified as soon as he bought to New York, even earlier than his PED-related misdeeds put him within the crosshairs.

Certainly, Rodriguez might have been a contender for the title of the best ballplayer of all time, however how a lot of his success, significantly his energy, owed to PEDs is a query that can without end canine him, and us. Within the wake of a 2009 report by Sports activities Illustrated‘s Selena Roberts and David Epstein that he was among the many 104 gamers who failed the supposedly nameless ’03 survey check, Rodriguez admitted that he started utilizing anabolic steroids not as an getting older ballplayer trying to maintain onto an edge however as a 25-year-old in his bodily prime, one beneath self-imposed strain to stay as much as his mega-contract. Later reporting revealed that he obtained a therapeutic use exemption permitting him to make use of testosterone throughout his MVP-winning 2007 season. Most damningly, from 2010 to ’12, he reportedly bought and used PEDs from Biogenesis, a Miami anti-aging clinic, which — after a lot wrangling, together with lawsuits towards the league, the gamers union, and the Yankees’ staff medical doctors — led to a 211-game suspension, later decreased to 162 video games, overlaying the whole 2014 season.

Improbably, Rodriguez managed a powerful comeback from all of that, with an unexpectedly robust 2015 season accompanied by welcome doses of humility, humor, and candor. Accidents and age prevented him from sustaining the bodily side of that comeback, however his August 2016 retirement was one thing of a lovefest.

No matter feel-good sentiments arose at that time aren’t more likely to carry over sufficient to raise Rodriguez to Cooperstown…

Extra right here.