253/350/457/807 in 269 ABs so far this year. Ortiz hasn't had a SLG% less than .600 since 2003. Between his horrific start to the season and his injury issues, the Sox haven't come close to seeing vintage Papi this year.

Ortiz isn't really that old at 32, but you really have to wonder if we're witnessing the start of his decline. How well can we expect an overweight DH with knee and wrist issues to age?

Unless there's some substantial improvement going forward, the Sox have essentially lost that thunder in the middle of their line up that made them so dangerous in the past.

Just for kicks:

2005 - 300/397/604
2006 - 287/413/636
2007 - 332/445/621
2008 - 253/350/457

It will never happen, but I wouldn't mind seeing this as our 1-6:

Pedroia
Youks
Drew
Bay
Ortiz
Lowell

This thread topic strikes me as an overreaction. Ortiz's numbers have improved every year until this one (when he's been hurt). And after a terrible slump at the start of the year, in the 33 games before he was hurt on May 31, he put up this line: .299/.393/.622/1.015 (11 HR, 27 RBI in 127 AB, 150 PA).

If he struggles and/or is injured next season, let's have this conversation again.

I don't think this thread is premature. I would hope the Red Sox front office is considering this possibility at this point, at the very least. We probably can't answer this question any time this season, but that doesn't mean it's not worth looking. He's not a spring chicken anymore and staying healthy is going to be a big part of predicting his value to the club going forward. With his build, odds are he's not going to age gracefully and at some point the Sox will have to walk away if they want to maximize their production.

The question is, when is the right time to do so?

As with any declining player, part of the equation is going to be weighing the alternatives. At this point, the Sox are probably not going to plan on making a move until Ortiz's current contract expires in 2011. At that point, they have one team option they can activate, or they can let him go and bring someone else in. With the constantly changing free agent landscape, it's difficult to predict who might be available to replace him, and internal options like Lars Anderson are still too far off to get more than a hopeful passing glance. But the possibility that we've seen the best of Papi is real. So I sincerely hope Foulkey Reese isn't the only one taking a close look at this. And I hope they don't wait until it's obvious that he's in that decline to do something about it.

I had been thinking of asking this same question, or more basically with it in mind, what is the replacement level for a DH? Since there is no requirement for fielding prowess, any player could DH and I'd peg the replacement level at the league average for all batters (minus pitchers).

As it turns out for this year in the AL, David Ortiz is a bit better than the average DH, who in turn are better at slugging, on-base percentage, and OPS than the average batter.

It's quite a bit below that level:

Name-BA-OBP-SLG-VORP

Sheffield, G. 222/322/375 2.0
Hafner, T. 215/326/350 -0.6

Somewhere between those two would be replacement level DHs given 502 PA, I'd think.

I think decline due to weight and/or injury issues are much different for a pure DH like Ortiz than for any other player.

Injuries can be a problem for any player, but Ortiz will never have the wear and tear issues that will affect a position player. Thus decline trends need to factor out field play. I don't think there have been many pure DH's, like Ortiz over the years. Edgar Martinez was certainly one, and an overweight one at that. His decline came pretty late in his career. In fact, his best years were from are 32 to 40.Edgar career stats.

Realistically, replacement level for DH probably also includes players with extremely low defensive metrics scores.

Otherwise, it would be too expensive to have that player DH, as he is likely to get offers from other teams to play fielding positions.

Just a thought.

It goes without saying (or at least it should) that the sample size is too small to draw many conclusions, but here's Ortiz since Manny was traded to LA, an interesting addition to this discussion going forward:

After: 14 games: 12-for-52, .231/.375/.442, 12 BB, 12 SO
Before: 60 games: 62-for-233, .266/.360/.498, 35 BB, 41 SO

After: 1 BB/5.3 PA
Before: 1 BB/7.7 PA

After: 3 IBB in 14 games (1 every 4.6 games)
Before: 5 IBB in 60 games (1 every 12 games)

Obviously it's still WAY too early to draw any meaningful conclusions from this data, but Papi is on pace to walk 24 times this month, the most since he walked to first 28 times in Sept of 06... the last full month he played without a certain long-haired curmudegon behind him. (For openess he did walk 24 times last Sept to go with a 396 avg and 9 hrs) The low batting average is most likely the result of a number of things, including a mini-slump and caution with the wrist, but it doesn't take Bill James to figure out that Ortiz isn't seeing the same kind of pitches anymore, even with a red-hot Youkilis behind him.

In fact, take it from Ortiz himself on August 5th in the Globe:






http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/reds...answers/?page=2

Is it possible that we could start seeing Ortiz hitting 4th? It seems silly to give him fewer ABs and risk him leading off too many innings, but it would force teams to challenge the 3 hitter (Youk?) with better pitches than they otherwise might.

Is walking a bad thing? Youkilis is putting up better numbers for the Sox than Manny did - so why is putting more guys in front of him a problem?

If Ortiz can improve 30 points from .231/.375/.442, that would be 261/405/475. Having that bat third in front of Youkilis/Drew/Bay is not a bad thing. He can blame his lower average and lack of power on not having Manny, but if people are going to pitch him differently because Youks is 4th instead of Manny, thats better for the Sox. Personally, I dont care of Ortiz hits 200/450/350. Get on base, we have plenty of fire power to bring him in.

At some point, people are going to realize Youkilis is good (like, really good) and go after Ortiz to walk Youkilis.

Ortiz's health is going to be a much bigger factor than not having Manny around. Every sentence about his future should include "if he remains healthy" because that's always the problem when it comes to big guys with bad legs. Plus the wrist.

I'd be a bit concerned, no doubt, because he's been hurt and less productive much more recently than he has healthy and productive. Relatively speaking, of course.

No it's not a bad thing to walk per se, but the .231 avg might mean that Ortiz is also chasing bad pitches -- pressing -- instead of simply giving in and turning into Bonds, and that would portend poorly. Also, Youkilis has been completely ridiculous this year (hitting over 300 every month!), but remember that his BABIP so far in August is .485. Let's see what happens when he comes back to earth a little.

To reiterate: I'm arguing that there's not enough data to conclusively say anything about our new lineup, but it will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Edit: Well put by Yecul above, although isn't health the most important factor for all 30+ players? Ortiz in particular, however, seems to be a huge question mark at this point because of injuries now 2 years in a row.

As you state, a 14-game sample is always dubiously small to try to extract meaning from -- but when it actually consists of 7 games at .107 / .242 / .107 followed by 7 games at .375 / .516 / .833 (which is actually .917 with correct umpiring), it's probably wisest to not even bother. This discussion can be fruitfully revisited later -- but in a couple of weeks.

To add to this, after four hits in his last eight ABs, Ortiz is now .267/.405/.483 for the month, and 0.406/0.537/0.813 (OPS of 1.349) in the last 9 games. I don't see why the last 9 games are more or less predictive than the first 7, fwiw.

http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/sports/r...position=recent

Continuing the wonderful day of injury news..

IIRC, team doctors had anticipated that there was a possibility that the "clicking" would remain....the silver lining is that there doesn't seem to be any "pain" involved, but, rather, just an annoyance. However, it looks like the annoyance is affecting Papi's mental approach, which is not a good thing.

What is not a good thing is how frequently Big Pop-up is pulling his head off the ball, dropping his hands, and popping up weakly at an alarming rate. His OBP has remained steady..and he is roping the occasional base clearing double, but Papi is clearly a shadow of his former. Hopefully this is just something he can clear up in the post or off-season.

A little more in the Globe today about the "clicking"--

It apparently occurred on May 31st and he says he first felt it when we were in Kansas City a month ago -- just after he'd come off the disabled list.



In terms of his mental approach, the home run yesterday was like a big F-U to the whole situation and I felt glad for him, but he's obviously aware his swing isn't "Papi" consistent.

He's got an .890 OPS since he got back.

If there were going to be any truly great teams in the playoffs, maybe I'd be more worried. But given the current competition, the Sox seem more than capable of repeating with a diminished Papi batting third.

The most important part of the Globe story, IMO, was that Ortiz said he's not experiencing any pain. The "clicking" sound has to be disconcerting to him, but it appears the issue now is more mental than physical -- that is, Ortiz not allowing the clicking to affect his overall approach at the plate and his swing.


As long as “you’re feeling good, then you’re clicking back” doesn’t equal “you’re feeling good, then the clicking and pain are back,” there’s no reason to think he can’t play through this

Is he popping up at an alarming rate?
His fly out drive rate is at 42.7%, lower than his career 44.6%. His ground ball rate is at 38% - this is the highest of his career.

His infield fly ball rate is at 8.7% - this is .7% higher than his career rate, but that was skewed heavily by his ridiculously low IFFB of 4.4% last year.

What I'm saying is this - you are flat-out wrong. He's quite obviously not popping up weakly at an alarming rate. It's a bit higher than his average, but it's still nothing weird. In fact, he has the same IFFB as Manny Ramirez, and he's .5% ahead of Milton Bradley and Mark Teixeira.

So where are these stats coming from? Before or after the wrist injury occurred? Did you just go to BP and find his season stats? Boy you are such a statistical guru! E-van watch out!

I am sorry...I do put some stock into actually watching hitters and seeing how they are swinging the bat. I study the mechanics of hitting a baseball. I do look at hand position, head position, load, and weight transfer. I have been studying Ortiz's AB's much more lately and he obviously is doing things different than he has in the past. I have looked at 2004-2007 AB's and compared them to his AB's over the last month and he is definitely doing some things he has not done. I don't know how much of his mechanical problems can be attributed to his injury, but he has said recently just how hard, mentally it is for him to get past the "clicking" in his wrist. I can tell you this..in the last 2-4 weeks he has been yanking his head off the ball and and dropping his hands earlier than he has in the past. Maybe he is trying to get into his swing earlier..I really don't know... but he is not consistently squaring the ball up as he has done in recent years. Much more often than not he is lunging at the ball. Sure he is going to run into a pitch now and then and hit one out, but his HR's have been few and far between...

Your post was not about honest evaluation, it was about making up a stupid nickname for David Ortiz.

These stats come from Fangraphs.com. It is a free and open source for stats - including ones like these. I am certainly not a statistical guru - I am just looking at basic numbers, ones that you can find for free. Since he's come back from injury, he's hit .295/.416/.493 for a .906 OPS - that has raised his seasonal split stats up .018/.026/.003 - so while he's not hitting for much more power, he's still getting hits a better rate than before. What this says to me is that his power hasn't fully returned yet, but he is getting better with actually getting on base which is a big step. Anecdotally, I've heard over the years that with wrist injuries, power is usually the last thing to return. Moreover, since August 9th he's hit .326/.462/.579, which are basically Ortiz' kind of numbers. So in the last month or so he's hit like he's supposed to - but you still think using your keen eye that he's still struggling. He had a bad stretch for homers there for a while, but he's still hit for power - even during that homerless streak, he had a slugging of .426 - not the best but he's still getting on base at the very least. Now, there is probably SOMETHING there about his wrist - but your analysis had nothing to do with this realization but rather Ortiz' admission of the problem.

Unlike you, I am using actual analysis, rather than looking at a large group of swings over the course of months. When you do this, you can have certain moments stick out in your mind (as I'm sure you have) and more than that you have a bunch of swings blend together. Are you taping every single PA that Ortiz has and breaking down every swing, or are you just mindlessly spouting off based on something you have already decided (I'm going with option b here).

Actually over the last month, using TVO, I have been breaking almost all of his AB's down frame by frame. He is definitely doing things consistently..that he has not done when he is really locked in and driving the ball. He is doing things mechanically that are hampering his power production. I will not run down my resume, but I can tell you I have learned from professional hitting instructors and have taught the same principles at a professional hitting school. I am by no means an expert, but I can tell you what to look for in a swing. Every hitter has things they do..no swing is the same, but all of the basic mechanical elements are shared by Major Leaguers.

I understand what you are saying Laddie when you say that an opinion can be skewed as far as GREAT or POOR results in specific AB's sticking out in your head, and the point is well-noted.. But your assertion would be more apt to describe the myriad of AB's I found on youtube or RedSox videos concerning his past AB's, as Ortiz striking out or popping up are nowhere to be found. As for his last month and lack of power...I have plenty to look at and it is not hard to see what he is doing.

OCL-If you have some of those breakdowns available, why don't you post some of them on here along with your analysis of his swing pre and post injury. That would give us all a chance to judge if what you are saying is true or not. Until you do that, not many folks are going to take what you say seriously. At this point, all we have to judge him on are his numbers.

I would also like to see all this analysis. It would be pretty remarkable as I don't have the time to sort through a month of plate appearances.

Honestly, I would like to, but as my DVR has reached 100% saturation with "Hannah Montanna" and "ZachandCody" I don't have the ab's saved... When I do it, it is between innings..I rewind...then go frame by frame using pause button.. Ortiz's swing had been bothering me for a couple of weeks..so I just got into the habit of watching his swing in between innings.

Ortiz and his hitting coach already know what he is doing wrong, I am quite sure... What I am wondering is has he tailored his swing a bit to minimize the effect of his injury or is simply a power slump? I would believe the latter if I hadn't seen him yanking his head, dropping his hands early, and lunging far too often. Since August 1st Ortiz has 4 Hr's, 2 of them coming in one game.. There is definitely something wrong. Is it mental or physical?? Only Ortiz knows...but I think it is safe to say it may be a combination of both which has caused him to change his swing a bit and this is directly affecting his power production.

More linedrives since the injury (especially lately),fewer flyballs (by a bit, but near career norms), and significantly fewer groundballs.

I'm a bit confused by your saying Ortiz has hit significantly fewer ground balls since the injury. According to the charts on Ortiz's FanGraphs page, he is averaging 38.0% ground balls this year as opposed to 37.5% last year and 34.8% for his career.

One thing that FanGraphs does not do (or so I believe) is track pop-ups handled by outfielders. There are times that an outfielder calls off the infielder(s) on a pop-up; sometimes the opposite happens. Given the small number of infield pop-ups recored for Ortiz over his career, it would take very few of these events to skew the IFBB%

I looked at Retrosheet data for Ortiz from 2000 through 2007 to determine what percentage of fly ball outs handled by outfielders could be considered pop-ups. There are zones that contain the letter S for Short, i.g., 78S would be short left-center. Unfortunately, hit location data was only available for 2000-02 but that showed 210 instances of an outfielder recording an out off an Ortiz fly ball, 16 of which were also flagged as Short. Adding in two that were described as pop-ups, I found 18/212, or 8.49% of his flyball outs to outfielders could be considered pop-ups.

Sorry, I rushed that together and was a bit unclear. He has hit significantly fewer groundballs since coming back from the DL (as compared to before he went on the DL). This is the fangraphs data and if you look at the chart it shows the season average with a horizontal green line. The points on the graph are a moving average (40 games/ 50PA, whichever comes first). You can see that he was hitting groundballs at a higher rate (~42-45%) earlier in the year than he has since coming back from the DL (~35%). I was referring to his variation within 08.

Looking at this same figure shows that his groundball rate since coming back from the DL is lower than any season average since '05 (but within somewhat normal variation, as there are points in other seasons where the moving average was lower).

Edit: Details

Let me see if I can summarize Oil Can Liver's arguments briefly:
1. Stats are unnecessary when you can just watch the player.
2. I have broken down lots of Papi's swings, and he is doing some mechanical things wrong in virtually every at-bat.
3. I have lots of credentials for analyzing people's swings.
4. I can't actually show you any of the things I assert, because I have to keep Hannah Montana on my DVR.

Look, if you are going to make a point about Papi's swing, then assert your point, and BACK IT UP WITH EVIDENCE. It makes you much more credible than simply asserting that you are an expert. Plus, I think people might actually appreciate you showing them what might be wrong with his swing. I'm sure there are things you're seeing, but it'd be helpful for the rest of us if we could see them as well, rather than having to rely on your word. I'm having a hard time believing that your DVR doesn't have room for a single at-bat.

Mocking Captain Laddie for refuting your point with actual facts was also rather uncalled for. "Boy you are such a statistical guru! E-van watch out!" is a pretty terrible response to his post, which basically said that despite what you're saying, the stats seem to say the opposite. Be a rational adult and explain or show why your points have merit.

Personally, I would love it if you (or anyone) could show the difference between 2008 Ortiz and, say, 2006 Ortiz. I don't know enough about the mechanics of hitting to really analyze what he's doing, and would love to be educated.

P.S. I would really appreciate it if you changed your avatar. The smugness on Beckett's face, combined with the smug tone of your posts, has really made it hard for me not to irrationally dislike Beckett when I look at his face. Could you go with Lugo or something?

He's banned now. Not because of this thread, though.

The overshift is killing me, and every time it works (anecdotally, a lot, lately) Ortiz gets that deflated, angry look on his face and sulks back to the dugout. He needs to drop one bunt down the line and jog to an easy single, just to keep teams honest.

Honestly I was kind of wondering about him dropping down a bunt in the 9th inning last night.

and there it is. shame it was a crappy bunt...

The irony of this discussion is that if OCL actually meant "routine fly balls" when he said "weak pop ups," and avoided the needless snark, it would have been a valuable addition to the board. But some people have to overstate every point they make. (I know, because I'm one -- the difference being that once I'm called on it, I try to admit it and restate more accurately / objectively.)

Here are Ortiz' HR/FB percentages for the past 5 years, from THT:

20.7
22.2
26.6
18.1
14.7

That 14.7 is only a few percentage points above average, according to THT--and it's actually a bit lower than both Drew (17.2) and Youk (15.2). His fly balls just aren't going as far as they used to; he's generating less power. We saw a bit of that last year, but he was still managing to square balls up and hit hard line drives, keeping his average and SLG up--thanks largely to an out-of-career-context .355 BABIP (if he had matched that BABIP in 2006, for instance, his averages would have been .342/.458/.692). The idea that he 'improved' last year is really an artifact of that BABIP spike. As a power hitter, he declined.

This year, the BABIP has descended to its 2006 level while the power has continued downward. The combination of those two trends has turned him from a Ruthian force to just a good hitter. I think the important question is, can he rebound, and how far? He's going to be 33 next year, still plenty young enough for an Indian summer if he's really healthy.

David ORR-tiz is the number one question mark on this team heading into the offseason. How the Sox spend their resources this offseason should depend pretty heavily on whether the big guy is:

a) Still recovering from the wrist injury
b) Slumping
c) The beneficiary of a doctored birth certificate, actually 39 years old, and in steep decline, or;
d) Some combination of the above

After having two playoff series worth of at-bats to look at, what are people thinking heading into the offseason? If ORR-tiz is finished being Big Papi, we will certainly need to add a bat to this lineup. Diminished returns from our DH and (in all likelihood) 3B are not going to get this club past a Tampa Bay team that is legitimately better and a Yankee team that we can reasonably expect to reload.

ProJo - Ortiz says surgery won't be needed on wrist



I'm certainly not a medical expert, but I have a bad feeling about this.

I thought when Big papi first went on the DL there were other mlb players notably Pat Burrell, who had almost the same exact injury in the past. Burrell's was in 2004 and did not require surgery. 2004 was a down year statistically but he was back to his loftier standards the following year.
2004 OPS+ 107 2005 OPS+ 128.

Expectations for his future production and health should be hedged and planned for accordingly. While he can certainly be the Ortiz of old it should not be expected as a certainty.

CF, SS, C, 3B, and the bench are all places to upgrade offensively. Some easier than others, though none present easy options. The most obvious immediate 'fix' is to send Lowell away and bring aboard Tex sticking Youks at 3b. I see that as very unlikely.

This offseason will be interesting to watch. Retaining Lowell, Lugo, and Varitek seems extremely likely. Of the three, Lugo has a great chance at beign sent on his way, but even that requires a buyer.

Probably some combination of the three, with the (a) being the major factor. Ortiz's swing was clearly off, and the Rays knew how to pitch him.

He doesn't need a doctored birth certificate for steep decline. I don't really know why everyone expected him to be awesome throughout his 30's in the first place.

Players of his body type generally decay pretty quickly after age 31 and while they still have their batting eye and can have up and down years or really hot streaks (see Carlos Delgado in August), you can't typically rely on them to replicate even 90% of their peak.

The biggest problem here is not David Ortiz though. Even this year he was an above average DH. The problem is that this offense has very little margin for error when David Ortiz is ordinary. Sadly, however, unlike in 2002 when Theo took over a team that was strong on the weak hitting side of the defensive spectrum but got spectacularly poor production from its DH, 1B, and 3B, there are no easy gaps to fill. I guess you can be an optimist and think that Lowrie will give you something on the order of an average hitter at SS. But C is very likely to be a black hole and CF is not going to be very good. 3B you have to hope Lowell recovers but my guess is that we don't get another good season out of him with the bat. I have hope for Lars but don't know where he would slot in. This offense could still be very good in the aggregate (they were this year), but will start to accumulate even more frustrating games where only one or two guys does anything.

If the Sox are going to trade Buchholz, I say do it for Salty and not Peavy.

Total agreement. I'd much rather read that he's been playing with a reparable injury than with something that may or may not heal with time and that he may or may not feel confidence about after it may or may not heal.
Plus, I don't know about batting mechanics, but how does the wrist cause him to swing right through three Garza fastballs?
Unless there is a concrete injury that someone can conclusively prounounced healed in March, I'm very skeptical about Papi going forward.

The Sox have two more years at $12.5 million / each on his contract, right?

Who would have thought that the deals for Lowell and Ortiz may end up being real albatrosses, when they looked so prudent at the time.

Ortiz may have been one of the greatest post-season clutch performers ever. But, at least in this post-season, he generated no excitement for me, as a fan, coming to the plate as he seemed too often like an easy out.

I would guess that many here believed that signing lowell to a 4 year deal last winter was, at best, solid for a few years with an expected decline, and at worst, short-sighted given his age and unevent production over the past 4 years.

Just about everyone not holding 'Re-sign Lowell' signs at the parade were against the Lowell deal.

I am really nervous about him not undergoing surgery, I mean, at least let them go in there and tighten up the sheath or whatever they do. I can just see it now, everything is fine all winter, smiles in the spring and then one swing in April and it's the same thing all over again.

In a recent tv interview, Ortiz mentioned he's having a harder time maintaining a strong grip on the bat. This will impair your ability to swing very hard and you'll lose some bat speed. What he didn't say was whether the impaired grip is directly attributable to the injury, or a result of not being able to do his usual strength/lifting exercises in order to baby the wrist.

The weaker grip is also a factor in not being able to hold back, adjust to the pitch, and drive the ball to LCF.

Yep. Didn't we find out that he avoided off-season surgery on his knee in spite of the fact that the Sox wanted him to have it? I had just assumed that he was heading for wrist surgery and my concern was how well he would recover. This is worrisome.

The Sox must have some way of risk modelling how likely it is--or to what extent --that players recover from injuries, but Ortiz and Lowell represent the most vexing kind of off-season dilemma, simply because it is so difficult to predict and plan for.

If you dig a bit deeper and look at Ortiz's yearly statistics, there is more to the story.

First, he had a .914 OPS in the second half.

Second, his slugging in the second half was .529, well below his normal .600 SLG. However, combined in May, September and October, he slugged right around .600.

Third, he was placed on the DL on June 3 and returned from the DL on July 26. After having a few good games in July, he had a decent August, perhaps because his wrist was still healing, perhaps because he was learning how to hit with the wrist, or perhaps because he just had a rough month.

Last, what do we think about April's statistics? Just a rough start, or more indicative of a long-term struggle?

I'm inclined to say, "Let's catch our breath, give him the off-season to rest and heal the wrist, and then let's see how he performs in 2009." He's still gets on base at a great clip, and he still has some power. I hope a few months off help him come back strong.

I don't think his issues at the end of the year were wrist related, I think his knee was bothering him. He was making the exact same move he was making early in the season, opening up was too quickly, front foot was open and his weight shift was off, during the last couple weeks. That is when his knee was bothering him and is consistent with a knee problem. I am sure the wrist did not help matters, especially on outside pitches.