"A blog post on the indispensable baseball-reference.com caught the eye the other day: "David Ortiz is having the greatest season by a 35+ DH in history."

The numbers are compelling. The Red Sox designated hitter entered last night's game with the Toronto Blue Jays hitting .318 with 28 homers, 91 RBI and a .994 OPS, which ranked third in the American League.

The web site used Ortiz's OPS+ of 165 — the relative measure of his OPS to the rest of the league — to judge his 2011 season slightly better than Edgar Martinez' 2001, when the former Seattle Mariners star hit .322 with 29 homers and 102 RBI for an OPS+ of 160 at 38.

Ortiz is only 35, but seeing what Martinez did when he was three and four years older got us thinking. Is there any reason Ortiz couldn't maintain Martinez-like production into his late 30s? And if so, how valuable does that make him to the Sox going forward?

"As long as I'm healthy, I can do it," Ortiz said with a shrug while walking to the batting cages at the Rogers Centre yesterday, before hitting his 30th homer and going 2-for-4 with a walk in an 11-10 Red Sox loss. "The funny thing is, who's doubting me? I mean, seriously. What's going to stop me from doing that? Tell me. When it comes down to people questioning me, they should just say, 'Shut the (expletive) up.' Because this guy's been proving people wrong. I was born to do this.""