Goodbye to postseason legend David Ortiz: Looking back at his October heroics

The Red Sox are out of the playoffs, and that means David Ortiz's career is over

With the Red Sox's playoff ouster at the hands of the Indians, we're now confronted with the knowledge that we'll never again see Boston DH/warrior-poet crack a ball out of the yard. That's too bad, of course, but every career that starts must someday end. So it is with Big Papi, who is also the Biggest of Papis. Since our last glimpse of him was his taking hacks at Fenway in a playoff game, it's appropriate to take a moment to remember his utter brilliance in the postseason.

Coming into Monday's Game 3 against Cleveland, Ortiz had a career postseason line of .290/.403/.545 in 365 plate appearances. That comes to a .947 OPS, which is even better than his career regular-season OPS of .931. In 85 postseason games, he's tallied 17 homers and 22 doubles. Most impressive of all is his otherworldly line of .455/.576/.795 across 14 World Series games. The Sox, of course, prevailed in all three World Series in which Ortiz played.

As far as Ortiz's October bestowals on a historical level, he's without question one of the best playoff hitters ever. No comes close to Derek Jeter in terms of sheer volume, but Oritz ranks ninth all-time in postseason plate appearances. He's also ninth in playoff runs scored, 10th in hits, fifth in total bases, fourth in doubles, and tied for seventh in postseason home runs. Narrow the focus a bit to focus career numbers in World Series play, when the stakes are of course the highest, and Ortiz comes out even stronger. For instance ...

• He's fourth all-time in World Series batting average.
• He's second in World Series OBP.
• He's fifth in World Series slugging percentage.
• He's fourth in World Series OPS, and the guys ahead of him on the list have, respectively, 26, 26, and 30 World Series plate appearances to Ortiz's 59.

So, yes, Ortiz will surely be remembered at the very least as one of the very best World Series hitters in history. Maybe you penalize him for being a career DH when it comes to the Hall of Fame. However, in this writer's opinion it's appropriate to consider playoff performance when evaluating a candidate's merits. Big Papi's numbers when championships were on the line are unassailable, and that's going to help his Cooperstown case with voters. Spend some time in the Baseball-Reference Play Index, and you'll find that Ortiz is the only hitter in history with three postseason walk-off hits. No one else since 1903 has more than two.

Here's a look back at some of those clutch moments ...

David Ortiz would have had a great career even if he'd never appeared in a single postseason game, but in reality he was often at his very best when the games were the most important. As legacies go, that's not a bad one.