the sox have to factor in his position, or non position of DH. he is a great hitter, and by all accounts, a great teammate and leader, but how much does he really deserve if he never plays the field? the article says he's more valuable than damon or furcal, who both make 13+. is a DH more valuable than an upper tier CF or SS?

In Ortiz's case, yes, he's more valuable as a DH than most upper tier CF's and SS's. It's all relative, I think: for position players, Hitting + Fielding = Value. So with Ortiz, his fielding is 0. But that hitting number is huge.

BPcalculates WARP (wins above replacement players) by looking at hitting/fielding runs created/prevented compared to replacement level players by position, and then calculates how many wins those created/prevented runs contribute to a team in a season. It doesn't take into consideration any element of "clutchness" that Papi may possess, and yet he's still worth more than most "top-tier" CF or SS in the league.

For 2005, a sample of WARP among notable SS, CF and Ortiz:

J. Peralta: 9.2
D. Jeter: 8.8
D. Ortiz: 8.0
A. Jones: 7.9
M. Tejada: 7.6
V. Wells: 5.8
J. Damon: 5.5
T. Hunter: 3.5

Surprising on this list is Jhonny Peralta of Cleveland, the best SS that noone's heard of (last year's 23 year-old .292/.366/.520 campaign at the plate with a slick glove suggests the best is yet to come, too). But Ortiz edged out Jones, 50+ HR, CF glove, and all in terms of total value. Ortiz carries a mighty stick, indeed. The only reason that Jeter's even up there, by the way, is because he actually contributed value with his glove last year in addition to his solid offense.

wow, Dave S. that was an awesome argument, and i guess for the most part, i stand corrected. that list is surprising, but i have to wonder if defense is getting enough weight in the equation (of course, as you mention, clutchness and leadership are not weighted either).

But, let me ask you: if you were starting a team from scratch, given similar WARP #'s, would you draft a DH ahead of a CF or SS??

A statistical model for every argument ...

I dunno, I'm unconvinced by the Vaughn argument, which strikes me mostly as another example of this blog's not-so-subtle antagonism to the Sox. Ortiz has gotten consistently better in recent years, and there were no indications at all of his tailing off any time soon.

I've posted a more detailed rebuttal at the site linked in this post:

Click here for post

since I've no idea if Hudson's argument actually is a legitimate counter-argument to the statistical one (I see his point, but I'm not expert enough to know whether it actually renders the statistical approach moot), I'll go the obsolete scout's route. It seems to me that Ortiz's decline is more likely to occur because of his body type. He's top heavy (what a gigantic head!) and that puts a ton of stress on the legs. How many players who've had his bodies have been monsters after 31, 32?

pretty dumb argument, but that's what I got.

Benjah...I think you're correct to wonder about the data I referred to...it's just one measure of performance. I think it's pretty good because it tries to integrate both hitting and defense into a single value metric, but from my understanding, there's a lot more variance around defensive stats in that they're harder to accurately measure. At least as far as the weighting goes, though, offensive and defensive runs both count for the same amount either for achieving "wins" in the WARP calculation, so it isn't that offensive runs are more meaningful than defensive runs...Papi just created a ton of runs with his bat. Also, really bad defensive players (and offensive players for that matter) can score negatively. That is to say, their performance is worse than a replacement player, either on offense or defense. I think the big question is whether or not the defensive calcs are all that accurate. And to be sure, it's a Byzantine calculation, so it really is possible that the defensive side of the equation isn't being assessed as well as the offensive side.

In regards to your other question, I probably wouldn't draft a DH first over those other positions, unless the guy was just an absolute masher [and almost certainly not based on one year. Papi has gotten better every year for the last three years, but I'd wager that last year represents his peak value.] But hitters like Frank Thomas at his peak, or Edgar Martinez, or Ortiz...I don't know. I guess I'd want to have a good feel for how they're projected forward. The analysis David referred to here suggests (though Hudson makes a good refute) that Ortiz looks more like players who became injury prone in later seasons. I've also read analyses in the past that suggest that faster players age better than slower players (are less injury prone, generally more durable), but there are exceptions to all of these.