On Tuesday, David Ortiz will either be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility or come very close: As of Tuesday, he was listed on 83.9% of the ballots that were publicly known, above the 75% needed for induction. If and when Ortiz gets in, he would join a small group of inductees who spent a good chunk of their careers as a designated hitter, among them Paul Molitor, Frank Thomas, Harold Baines and Edgar Martinez.
He also might be one of the last designated hitters enshrined in Cooperstown, at least for the foreseeable future, and not because of any backlash toward players who only hit and don’t play the field (that debate seemingly was settled with the induction of Baines and Martinez in 2019, and with Ortiz’s strong candidacy).