What Is Wrong With David Ortiz
David Ortiz is hitting — that is, to the extent he has stood in the batters box with a bat and hit a pitched ball and run towards first base. He is hitting, that is, in that he is and has been a hitter in the technical sense of the term. He is not hitting in that he is not hitting. That is to say, he is not hitting in the David Ortiz sense, the sense where he crushes line drives and smacks majestic home runs. David Ortiz, it should be noted, is 39 years old. The implication is that David Ortiz is, like all of us, getting older — and also like all of us, but only relevant to him, his baseball skills are eroding. When a baseball player reaches Ortiz’s age, the end is coming fast; it’s just a question of when. Based on the way Ortiz’s first two months have gone, maybe that when is now.
It was only last season Ortiz hit .263/.355/.517. That’s a wRC+ of 135. Quite good! Ortiz spent this May hitting .214/.287/.337, however, and it’s not as thought he was much better in April either. His combined slash line this season is .224/.308/.379. With his age and skill set, that’s bound to engender talks of his retirement. Baseball death, often like real death I suppose, can arrive quickly. But Ortiz has had tough starts to seasons in the past and gone on to excellence. Some have postulated that, instead of age, the problem is mechanical issues with Ortiz’s swing that are the true culprit. It is possible Ortiz’s bad start is entirely age related and this is who he is now, i.e. someone whose time has gone. It’s also possible that his lousy production is entirely the fault of faulty swing mechanics. It’s also possible that it’s some combination of both.
Let’s see if we can determine the difference between Ortiz now and Ortiz over the previous few seasons in terms of production. Between 2010, a season I picked because by then he had recovered from a serious wrist injury, and 2014, Ortiz averaged 33 doubles and 30 homers per season. Last season he hit 27 and 35, respectively. This year Ortiz has 11 doubles and six homers (through Wednesday’s games). Oddly, Ortiz recorded 518 at-bats in both 2013 and 2014, so let’s go with that number. So far this season, he’s had 181 at-bats. That’s 0.06077 doubles per at-bat and 0.0332 homers per at-bat. If Ortiz finishes with 518 at-bats this season and produces doubles and home runs at his current pace, he’ll have 32 and 17 of them, respectively. The doubles are right on pace. The homers aren’t. Doing the same for hits, at his current pace he’ll end up with 117, 19 fewer than last season. The problem seems to be a few fewer singles and a good number of home runs.
So let’s start our discussion of David Ortiz’s season with this fact: Ortiz is hitting grounders. Lots of them. Through Tuesday’s game, 44% of Ortiz’s balls in play were hit on the ground. Compare that to his career mark of 36%, which is exactly the same figure as he posted last season. So, more ground balls and a few more infield pop-ups for Ortiz. While infield pop-ups are always bad, grounders aren’t bad if you are Billy Hamilton. But David Ortiz is not Billy Hamilton. He’s more Billy Butler than Billy Hamilton, and he’s even more David Ortiz than he is Billy Butler. In the end, Ortiz is a power hitter like a lion is a meat eater. That’s what sustains him. When he ceases to do that he ceases to do anything. Which is why his hitting more ground balls is a serious issue for Ortiz.
But getting away from the philosophy, there’s also the reality that balls hit on the ground, even if they are hit with extreme velocity, don’t generate much in the power department. Then there is the fact that Ortiz is not hitting his grounders with extreme velocity. The two prior seasons saw 27.4% and 28.0% of the grounders off Ortiz’s bat hit hard. This season he’s at just 18%, the lowest rate of his career. That might explain why Ortiz is hitting just .141 on ground balls this season. That’s a very small number, especially when compared to the league average of .232. Of course, Ortiz hit .178 on grounders last season against a league average of .239, so it’s not like what he’s doing in this narrow band of potential production is a death sentence. Still, it helps account for the drop in batting average. What it doesn’t solve is much in the way of his power problem.
Or does it? Each at-bat is an opportunity. A home run is an event contributed to equally by the batter and pitcher. The pitcher throws the pitch of a variety and in a specific location to the hitter giving him the ability to hit it out. The batter then does his part and hits it out. Pitchers throw numerous pitches that could be home runs but aren’t because the batter wasn’t able to take advantage of the opportunity. One of the advantages of patience is, in theory, an increased chance that the pitcher makes a mistake. The more pitches he throws, the more likely he spins a slider or misplaces a fastball. So when Ortiz hits a weak grounder to second, it’s not that he could have hit that pitch into the bleachers. Maybe he could have, but more likely he could have hit one of the previous pitches he saw or one of the subsequent pitches, had he not swung or fouled off that pitch. That’s not really a plate-patience issue so much as an exactness issue.
So grounders, weak grounders, and more weak grounders are all parts of our problem. This brings us to the thing that keeps Ortiz up nights: the shift. The shift isn’t keeping Ortiz from hitting home runs, but it very likely is keeping him from hitting many more singles. No hitter in baseball has faced the shift more frequently than Ortiz this season, who still hits many grounders and line drives into the teeth of it. But while Ortiz would undoubtedly be more productive without the shift, I don’t believe it is preventing him from being productive.
Ortiz isn’t hitting his fly balls as hard as he has in previous seasons either. The fewest number of Ortiz’s fly balls have been hit hard, 33%, since the 2009 season when his wrist was hurt, and the second fewest of his career. He’s not hitting the ball as hard and he’s not hitting it as far, as evidenced by his spray charts.
One could look at that data and postulate Ortiz is getting old. Hitting a major-league pitch over the fence requires all types of coordination and strength and if one thing goes wrong the whole house of cards can topple. The increase in ground balls, the weaker contact — it all points towards the conclusion that age is starting to get the upper hand. Except, maybe it doesn’t. Anecdotally it seems that way, but I’m not sure any of the information I presented above proves Ortiz’s problem isn’t mechanical. Is Ortiz hitting the ball more weakly because of age or because his swing is messed up? I’m not sure we can definitively know.
On May 28 and 29, Ortiz sat on the bench. He wasn’t hurt; rather, he was getting time off to clear his head. He studied video of himself. He tried to work on the flaws he saw. Since he’s returned to the lineup he’s hit .316/.350/.474. It’s all of five games, but it’s something.
One more thing before we get to the conclusion. David Ortiz, like many left-handed hitters, has never been particularly strong against same-sided throwers. His OPS is 162 points lower against lefties. This season that difference in OPS is 579. That’s massive. So far this season 63 of Ortiz’s plate appearances have come against lefties. His BABIP is through the floor, and he’s not hitting the ball as hard as he normally does, but his strikeout rate is consistent with his career averages. Against right-handers, though, he’s been the same old Ortiz.
Ortiz has seen this all before. Pitchers aren’t approaching him differently and neither are fielders. He is simply doing less with it than he has previously. It’s tempting to count him out given his age and his level of production, but people have done that before and looked silly for it. Way back up there, a thousand tons of information ago, I suggested Ortiz’s problems might be part aging and part mechanical. I believe that’s true. I think we know what Ortiz is doing wrong. I’m just not sure we know why he’s doing it.
That next-to-last graph about Ortiz and his struggles vs. lefties should have been higher in the article.
Yeah that’s a pretty big oversight. The only thing wrong with Ortiz is that he’s not being platooned. Seems like a pretty obvious solution.
vs R: .277/.387/.496
vs L: .129/.127/.177
You could have flushed this entire article down the drain and replaced it with one paragraph.
One sentence: He thinks this is his “F**KING CITY!”
At this point the Red Sox best hope is for Pablo to eat Ortiz and then die from indigestion.
Interestingly, Sandoval is suffering from the same massive weakness this year (getting killed by LHP). Is there a great platoon vs LHP hitter out there that EITHER one could eat? Assuming that eating said hitter would allow the would-be cannibal to absorb the hitter’s powers?
he’s actually better vRHP this year so far than he was last year. BB/K rates included. weird.
And when I say he’s better, I mean relatively. Clearly no players on the Red Sox team can be called “better” than anyone else.
you gotta be quicker than that.
I would, but I thought my lack of quickness would serve as a metaphor for David Ortiz’s speed.
Neither of you are the real everdiso
killing time while Panda gives up another lead, eh boys?
do people still think a 40 year old throwing 86 mph makes a good closer?
Man! Are you obsessed with the Red Sox or what? I never read any article remotely related to the Red Sox without you high jacking half the comments immediately. You should see a shrink! You should really consider it, for your own well being!
“do people still think a 40 year old throwing 86 mph makes a good closer?” Uehara throws 87, you lying liar.
i leave aone relatively positive post about Ort (the first one) and the trolls come a runnin. weird.
so you are saying have hanley dh against lefties.
Watching some of the games recently, he does look to have been trying to swing the other way all of a sudden (in Fenway games) – which always seems like a smart idea for a lefty in Fenway – that might account for some of the ball-speed drop? Is there data comparing avg hit velocity on opposite field hits vs pulls?
Since you don’t come to a firm conclusion in your article, shouldn’t the headline end in a question mark?
Never really pictured ortiz leaving at the top of his game like a few occasional players do, once in awhile. Always figured hed stay until he couldnt produce.
The only evidence I see that this is not simply age related is that he’s still performing against righties. The ground balls, weakly hit everything, those are all signs of aging that we talk about all the time. The platoon thing should definitely be mentioned earlier because that’s the only ambiguous part of his stats.
Sometimes, we do a disservice to logic and common sense by trying to poster everything that happens (or doesn’t) with advanced metrics.
Here’s the main metric that counts. David Ortiz: 39y, 6m, 17d.
David Ortiz is pushing forty in a game when one’s prime usually ends around 33 or 34-years-old.
There’s also the issue of steroids, Ortiz being one of the better-known cheaters of the Steroid Era. There’s no way this guy achieved the numbers he produced in the prime of his career clean. Maybe the past couple years he was on steroids and now he isn’t.
Oh, and before someone gets cute and says, “But he passed every test,” I would say it’s more accurate that he beat every test. Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, and A-Rod were passing their tests, too.
I think it’s a case of a guy who was an average hitter and a mediocre ballplayer taking a bunch of steroids to produce great statistics. Now, he’s older and there’s so much smoke around his steroid use that he feels he can’t use.
Or maybe he’s just playing a game at an age where most people are already retired.
I think you nailed it. He’s managed to avoid the normal career trajectory of almost every other player in baseball history this side of Barry Bonds, and the most likely explanation for that, to me, is PED’s. It just ain’t normal for players to extend their prime like he has.
Both of you must be a joy to be around! I don’t envy somebody so cynical.
I’m sorry sir. You are wrong, and without citation. If your referring to 2003, do you r homework. If you’ve ever watched Ortiz, you’d realize his game is working the count, laying off tough pitches, fighting off ones he can’t do anything with, and lacing the ones he can into the gaps. He is a great “hitter”, not a slugger.
You are a moron. You realize Ortiz’s strength never changed from his Twins days right? He just started working counts and making much more/better contact. Steroids don’t give you better contact, they give you strength, which was never Ortiz’s issue.
I love how steroids is almost literally a witch hunt. Play well, you are using steroids; play poorly, you were using steroids and now you aren’t.
Of course, either way Ortiz will walk away from the game with hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody will drown him, hence the “almost.”
David Ortiz is one of the more obvious cheaters. I’m very sorry if some of you have your heads buried in your calculators and are blind to the obvious, but even if you look at the metrics, it’s rather incredulous that a player of Ortiz’ profile would suddenly jump from averaging 106 wRC+ from 1998-2002 to averaging a 157 wRC+ from 2003-2007.
If you believe that happened because David Ortiz was “working counts” rather than working syringes into his flabby body, I don’t know what to tell you. Sorry, but guys don’t turn 28-years-old and suddenly increase their production by so great a variance.
This isn’t to say Ortiz isn’t a good hitter, that he doesn’t “work the count” and “hit the ball the other way.” I don’t think Ortiz took steroids and sat by the pool. I think he took steroids, went to the gym, went to the batting cage, studied film/charts of opposing pitchers.
I think without steroids, Ortiz is probably, somewhere around his 2002 or 2008-2009 seasons as a hitter. That’s a guy who will bat .260-.280. Maybe in a good year, he’ll hit .300. About 30-HR power with a .340-.370 OBP.
That’s what I believe David Ortiz’ natural level of talent was. I think steroids took a guy who was a .270 hitter with decent power and turned him into a .300 hitter with a .400 OBP and 40-50 HR power.
Technically when bonds did HGH they were legal to do in MLB. Him being blackballed is a disgrace upon this game.
He wasn’t blackballed. He was a 43-year-old showing his age a bit, of limited value, a huge asshole by most accounts, and perhaps most importantly was facing a federal investigation and was an enormous PR nightmare waiting to happen.
There is not a shred of evidence that anyone at MLB or any of the individual teams communicated to any team a desire to keep Bonds out of the game.
Barry Bonds hit .276/.480/.565 with a 3.2 WAR his last year. He may have been showing his age in that he didn’t hit a ridiculous .362/.609/.812 with 11.9 WAR he did two years before (at age 40 mind you).
But business wise, he definitely should have gotten a contract offer. I think as you stated, his legal issues were what stopped him from being signed by anyone.
I hear what you’re saying about Bonds. My issue isn’t that people like Bonds, Clemens, Ortiz, A-Rod, Braun, Manny, etc… should be blackballed from the game. I also recognize we’re talking about talented players here. A lot of players took all the same stuff Ortiz, A-Rod, Bonds, and Clemens were taking and they didn’t all hit 500, 600, 700 HR’s or record 4500 strikeouts.
I’m just saying we have to be realistic here. People don’t spend millions of dollars and risk years of their lives if taking these PED’s didn’t increase strength, speed, velocity, performance. Statistically, there’s typically an arc of production in a player’s career. He will come-up to the majors. He’ll have some success. Pitchers will exploit his weaknesses. He’ll add on some muscle mass, learn the strike zone, learn what pitchers are doing, learn what to swing at, what to lay-off; learn what he can hit for a single, learn what he can drive.
The thing is, that usually doesn’t happen all at once. So, if we’d seen Ortiz go from being a 110 wRC+ guy to a 115 wRC+ guy to a 125 wRC+ guy with maybe a couple 135-140 wRC+ years, that would be more believable. To see a guy be basically an average hitter for a couple years, basically spend all of 2000 in the minors, and be a 100-110 wRC+ guy, then he goes to Boston and instantly becomes a 145-175 wRC+ guy, sorry, that doesn’t really fit.
You have to be pretty blind/stupid to think that Ortiz’s career hasn’t followed a proper trajectory.
Normal hitter: roughly a bell curve peaking at ages 27 to 30
Ortiz: power peaked exactly from ages 27 to 30. Scandalous!
Bonds/steroid hitters: power peaked from ages 27 to 31…until it spiked to levels never before seen from ages 35 to 39
Except in 2003 he failed not 1, but 2 tests. That didn’t hit the media until he started mouthing off about banning all caught steroid users for life on the first offense. Won’t even discuss steroids now. LOL
Platoon with HanRam. He’s awful in the field!
I have tried to gleefully throw the dirt on Ortiz’s grave several times when he has had slow starts in the past, only to watch him start to crush the ball again. One of these years it really is going to be the end, but I am going to wait a while before I believe it for sure.
This article could have been written in a less smug (and unnecesarily wordy) way, considering the analysis was not all that great.
The “analysis” in this article simply isn’t up to Fangraphs’ standard.
The thing that kills me about Ortiz is that even in the slump of slumps, he still doesn’t want to hustle–all he wants to do is strut around and showboat. He NEVER runs out any ground balls or fly balls for that matter. The only time I ever see him hustle is if he thinks he can make it for a double or perhaps score.
That’s because the most important thing for David Ortiz has always been Being David Ortiz. That was tolerable when Being David Ortiz was indistinguishable from Helping the Red Sox Win. But now those two things have diverged: Being David Ortiz does nothing for the Red Sox, who are losing. Thus just Being David Ortiz is no longer tolerable. But he hasn’t got the memo (nor would I expect him to read it if he did. He’s old for a baseball player, and old people don’t change their ways.)
Couldn’t agree more Joe
“Hustle” is useless for a power hitting DH, other than makin the simple minds think he is “gritty” (another useless term for a baseball player). The last thing I care about is Ortiz sprinting to dust on a ground ball to 2B.
Getting back his power stroke and bat timing, now that I care about!
Spoken like a true fan of fantasy baseball and not actual baseball. Lot of young players on that team, set an example. I’ve seen him in countless games this year not even make it a fifth of the way down the line on balls in play. Its no wonder the Sox are circling the drain.
Although that’s a good point, in Ortiz’s case, he’s probably more likely to hurt himself hustling for anything other than an extra base (on a liner to the outfield) than do all that much substantive… at least by this point in his career.
It’s funny, because Manny’s lack of hustle is part of what ran him out of town. I was at his last series at Fenway against the Angels in 2008 when he was getting booed after every grounder he didn’t hustle out of the box. I actually remember John Lackey that series took a no-hitter into the 9th, and it could have been broken up if Manny even jogged to 1st.
I’m tempted to think Ortiz won’t be put up with for much longer if he doesn’t start producing.
Lose the rambling style that results in lots of unnecessary words, and insert some graphs!
I don’t understand why so many FG articles have to start with a paragraph of falsely defining, un-defining, re-defining, and explaining the definition of some absurdly simple word or concept that everyone already knows.
The curse of Jeff Sullivan.
Once again, fangraphs stumbles upon the right answer then conjures up some math to invent a statistical explanation.
The shift is killing Ortiz, and baseball writ large. Nothing more to see here folks.
The shift is why he isn’t hitting for power? Strange how that didn’t stop him before this season.
It’s a special shift where they put the outfielders in the bleachers.
I heard about that. Downright dirty.
I’ve seen almost all the Red Sox games, a habit which isn’t going to continue. They look like a team twenty games out in August.
Ortiz has really lost bat speed. He talks about timing, but timing is about splitting the difference between off speed and fastball speed and dealing with the difference. Ortiz age related slowing has left him under the margins of timing. His I’m amazing act gets old fast without the slugging, and this is an offense that needs a real change in attitude. They should DFA Ortiz, get Hanley the hell out of LF, and platoon Panda. Bare minimum.
He probably needs to be platooned, especially since they have HanRam and are a tad overstuffed in the OF.
But honestly, even his production against RHP isn’t what it used to be — it’s in line w/ last year, but substantially worse than years prior to last. He was probably just managing to eek out one last good season last year in his age-related transition and isn’t able to do the same again this year.
He looks like he’s either not seeing the ball well or that he’s trying to guess where he’ll be pitched, swings there, then hits it like shit because the pitch wasn’t there.
Look at his footage of some of his ABs yesterday afternoon… that doesn’t look like a David Ortiz swing.. there’s no authority and you can almost see him second guessing.
No more steroids
“Old player gets old, experiences four year annual decline in production at end of his career; must be steroids. News at eleven.”
ARODS COUSIN IN JAIL
PAPI PRODUCTION SLUMPS
YOU CANT EXPLAIN THAT OTHER THAN HIS PED SUPPLY DRIED UP
Stop yelling at me
You Won’t Believe Why This Forty Year Old Acknowledged Steroid User Is Slumping Badly
He old!
All the people who are claiming Ortiz has lost bat speed or that he’s not seeing the ball well or that he’s slumping because he’s no longer on steroids are ignoring the fact that he’s hitting .277/.387/.496 against right-handed pitchers. That’s a .372 wOBA and 138 wRC+.
Has he ONLY lost bat speed against left-handed pitchers? Do the steroids magically kick in against right-handed pitchers?
He’s struggling against lefties. That’s the whole story. Everything else is unfounded speculation.
I assume he’s being tested more often, so he’s had to cut back on the ‘roids.
And you know what they say about assumptions!
I agree with many here that Ortiz’s cratering seems to go a long way to explaining what is going on here.
But I’m also curious: is there any way we could get the same collection of 2014 numbers that this article cites for JUST the first two months of 2014, to match the current date?
I say this because, as the article notes, Ortiz has gotten off to slow starts before. This isn’t new for him, and April and May are his worst and second-worst months of his career, respectively.
Some relevant numbers for Ortiz in 2014 as of certain dates:
April 17: .222/.290/.365
May 4: .241/.344/.446
July 20: .249/.348/.474
Ortiz climbed as the season progressed, and a couple of major hot streaks help bring his numbers eventually more to where they belonged. Is it surprising that his starting slump might be longer and the depths of that slump deeper with him another year older? Not to me, at least.
It’s certainly possible that we’re seeing the cliff, but Ortiz has also made major adjustments in the past, oftentimes in midseason. If I had to put the money on something, it would be on him figuring things out enough to be very worth having around. Not as good as before, but still enough of a power force.
do u really want to get rid of him and take a chance he’ll go elsewhere and burn your butts?statistics and metric geeks shut up and go away.
“Ortiz is hitting — that is, to the extent he has stood in the batters box with a bat and hit a pitched ball and run towards first base. He is hitting, that is, in that he is and has been a hitter in the technical sense of the term. He is not hitting in that he is not hitting.”
You need to work on your writing. This is a chore to read.
Since this article was written, Ortiz has improved his hard hit and flyball rates in every month. Also, since the all-star break, his combined LD and FB rate is nearly 70%, and his hard hit rate is approaching 50%.
Still isn’t hitting lefties very well, though.