David Ortiz gets in, who else got good (or bad) news?

The votes have been tallied and tabulated, and the Baseball Hall of Fame has a new class of one. Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz was inducted in his first year with 77.9% of the vote, with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling all failing to make the 75% cutoff point in their final year of eligibility.

What does this result mean for the Hall of Fame? Bradford Doolittle, Alden Gonzalez, Tim Keown and Buster Olney are here to break it down.

What do you make of David Ortiz getting into the Hall of Fame after his first year on the ballot?

Doolittle: I probably would have voted for Ortiz. While 500-plus homers is no longer an automatic ticket, his 541 dingers are a strong avatar for the duration of his excellence. His career WAR lags because of his lack of positional value, but that’s an ephemeral thing so abstract that I would hate to make that argument to Ortiz (or anyone else) in person. His job wasn’t to generate positional value but to create runs, and only 34 players have ever created more. Every one of those 34 is either in the Hall, will be in the Hall or would be if not for non-playing factors. The designated hitter has been an actual job in baseball for nearly 50 years, and “Big Papi” did it better than just about anyone. This is even before you get into his postseason record; he’s the all-time leader in postseason win probability added. It’s clearly a Hall of Fame résumé. Apparently enough voters agreed with that to get him in, and the fact that a lot of them really like Ortiz certainly didn’t hurt his cause.

Gonzalez: Ortiz’s early entry is indicative of how sometimes — even in an era consumed by numbers — the eye test and mere common sense should have a say in these evaluations. Ortiz was only a DH, his career WAR surpassed by 243 others throughout history (including 65 retired, eligible players who are not in the Hall of Fame). And yet Ortiz always felt like a Hall of Famer. What he meant to such a storied franchise, how he continually came…