Manny Ramirez is the first player to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot that actually tested positive for PEDs. How the BBWAA handles his case may set precedent for the future of PED offenders.
The steroid era controlled play in Major league Baseball for over a decade. During that time, it was unknown which players were doping and which ones weren’t. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens owned that era. Bonds and Clemens’ dominance occurred before Major League Baseball issued drug tests to control the use of performance enhancing drugs. That makes their cases for the Hall of Fame foggy and impossible to gauge. Manny Ramirez, on the other hand, tested positive for performance enhancing drugs during his career. This is mostly a matter of semantics, as it’s blatantly clear that Bonds and Clemens would have both failed the same test Ramirez did, however it will be a test for the Hall of Fame voters.
If we can zoom out from the steroid issue for a second and simply look at what Manny Ramirez did during his career, we see a clear Hall of Fame player. During his career, he slashed .312/.411/.585 while hitting 555 home runs. He was one of the premier players in the league during his peak years. In an 18 year career, he accumulated 66.3 fWAR. If there were no “morality clause” in play, Ramirez would likely be a first ballot hall of famer.
There is, however, a morality clause in place for Hall of Fame votes. This hurts Manny Ramirez in two ways. The first is the obvious one: His multiple positive performance enhancing drug tests. One could argue that Ramirez only tested positive in the latter years of his career, all of which were after he had already established himself as one of the premier hitters in the league. That’s a fair argument to make. Ramirez may have been using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs prior to being tested, but we have no way of knowing this.
The other way the morality clause hurts Ramirez is that he wasn’t exactly the most-loved teammate throughout his career. There are plenty of players in the Hall of Fame already that fit this bill as well, but that was before the morality clause. If the morality clause was intended to be about more than just steroid use, voters should consider using it as a reason for keeping Ramirez off their ballots.
What it comes down to is that a ballot with Manny Ramirez should probably include Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Clemens and Bonds were leaps and bounds better than what Ramirez was during each of their respective primes. To leave Bonds and Clemens off because of their association with steroids would be to believe that any user of performance enhancing drugs should not be eligible for the Hall of Fame. That voter should not include Manny Ramirez on their ballot.
Manny Ramirez’s Hall of Fame case presents us with the first of what will be many players attempting to enter the Hall of Fame with positive performance enhancing drug tests on their record. The same way that Bonds and Clemens set a precedent for their era by not being elected, Ramirez’s election or lack thereof will set a precedent for his era of PED use and the Hall of Fame. Whether or not he is elected will greatly affect those who will come after him, such as Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez.
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