This is a situation that I was not too eager to broach, but now that it’s the halfway mark into May and the home run total by David Ortiz matches my career total, it’s time.
When do the Red Sox make a change with David Ortiz?
The way I see it, there are two options, both of which belong to David Ortiz. Make no mistake: at some point, probably soon, the Red Sox will come to Ortiz and say the situation has reached a head.
Ortiz’s slump reached its nadir (at least, we hope it’s the nadir) with an 0-7, 12 LOB effort yesterday. The Sox will allow him to dig out of that nadir, but if he doesn’t, things will change in early June.
Ortiz will be presented with two options, and his situation will be such that he understands he has to accept one or the other.
And no, one option is not the benching of Ortiz. That would serve no earthly purpose to the ultimate goal: getting Ortiz hitting. This team is still dependent on Ortiz hitting. Any choice is going to be made with that goal as the endgame.
The organization has too much respect — as they should — for Ortiz to tell him that “this is how it’s gonna go, whether you like it or not.” They’re going to frame the order as if Ortiz has a choice — because in reality he does. This is a slippery slope the Sox will put themselves on, and they need to proceed as such.
They can get much more out of Ortiz if they go to him and say “look, the elephant in the room is that you’re struggling. It’s reached a point where it can’t go on as it is, and we’ve come up with two options. Out of respect to you, we will let you make the choice. Here are the options.”
Ortiz will either be told he needs to be dropped in the order to seventh (I’m guessing the lineup would go Ellsbury, Pedroia, Youkilis, Drew, Bay, Lowell, Ortiz, Varitek, Lugo) or he needs to go on the disabled list, take some time away from the game to clear his head, then work in extended spring training to get his mechanics tweaked out. A nice lengthy, confidence-building trip through the minors would put him on track to return in early July and ready to show everyone Big Papi is back.
Hey, if Chien-Ming Wang can pitch worse than Kyle Kendrick and be put on the DL with a phantom injury, why can’t Ortiz? (Note: this is not a knock on the Yankees. The Sox have been the king of DL manipulation for years and other teams are starting to catch on and do so themselves.)
Ortiz will be allowed to make that choice. If it were me, I would have Ortiz accept a demotion to the seven spot and work it out there. I’d do this because Ortiz’s potential bat reaps far more rewards than it would giving those at-bats to a platoon of Rocco Baldelli and Jeff Bailey.
I think Papi would choose the other option, though. I don’t think it makes sense for him to concede that he should be dropped to seventh. I want him to maintain the confidence that he’s a No. 3 hitter in the big leagues. By acceding to the dropdown, everyone knows even he realizes he’s not the same, and that would do damage to his self-confidence and boost the confidence of every pitcher in the league.
No, it would be better for him to take time off, rediscover his swing, then be eased back into the Sox lineup in the bottom of the order where the team can say he’s only batting that low because he’s being eased back in — not because he belongs down there.
Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half physical, after all.
What do you think? What option should Papi take?
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I would drop him to 7th. Keep in mind I have a hard time wrapping my head around the egos of baseball stars.
Drop him in the lineup, once he starts hitting again you move him back up to his rightful place. It helps him hit in a less stressful spot, so he can just focus on his swing and getting it back where it should be, and doesn’t hurt the more lethal part of the lineup.
Teams rarely have issues putting young hitters lower in the lineup until they get it going (see Ellsbury when he was first supposed to be our leadoff guy) and then moving them back up once they are hitting.
But I feel like, as nice as Papi is, his ego is the issue with dropping him.
You are right about the difficulty Papi and the Sox face. There is no doubt, with the hitting by the rest of the team, that if Papi were hitting even reasonably well, the Sox would be in first place now. Decision time is imminent, and it will be done carefully.
This is very complex, as you stated. IMO, he needs more than a mental health day and a drop in the order to a less crucial #7. That’s a bandaid, not a cure.
I think Tito will let him work through this road trip, get a few games in at Fenway in hopes he turns it around. If he does, the party begins. If he doesn’t, the DL is called for, because something serious is truly wrong . . . physical, mental, timing, confidence, whatever . . . and needs to be addressed in an environment conducive to resolving these issues, as you described.
I am appalled at the “Papi Is Toast” and “Dump Papi” posts on MLB.com, the Globe, the Herald by the resident “expert” bloggers on those sites. It shakes my faith in Red Sox Nation, as Boston fans for decades have supported their players, appreciated the nuances of the game (good and bad), applauded good performances, knew that bad performances happen. Boston fans have always been (for the most part) among the most intelligent and sensitive in baseball. To lose that reputation and legacy would demean baseball in Boston.
I don’t even have an answer. I just think he’s finished.
Ortiz has refused to move in to the 4th spot on more than one occasion in the past… so I doubt he’ll agree to drop to 7th now.
But I like that option over a DL stint.
I think Roccco could handle two weeks as the DH, but he’s a righty and the Sox love to alternate the lineup LH/RH. Bailey could be swapped out for Chris Carter (.301 BA in AAA) to fix that problem.
Bottom Line: IMO – as long as the Sox stay in within a game or two of 1st place, Ortiz will remain where he is. If they go on a 5-game slide and he continues to struggle – a change will be necessary.
I think he needs to do a serious steroids cycle again to get back to where he was two to three years ago. It’s the only way.
Well, the two options asume one thing: This is just a slump, and Papi will be back. Sadly I’m not in the optimistic side of this argument. I hope I’m wrong and I will gladly apologize for my pessimism, but the truth is I’m worried about Ortiz since last year. And this year seems to confirm my worst fears about him.
The steroid question looms large here. With the stiffening of the testing coinciding with his struggles, it doesn’t take a Rocket scientist to do the math.
If it’s his wrist, lets sit him down and fix it!
If he’s just lost it, I love the guy as much as anyone, but how long can a contender march a guy out there who is on the team because he hits, and has shown NO power this year, or really anything with the stick. To this point, if we platooned Carter/Baldelli, really anyone in that spot, we would be sitting in 1st with a 3-4 game lead right now.
This carries a far more complex set of baggage than I feel is being let on.
First of all, as far as fan reaction — people want to talk about the fan reaction to Papi’s recent woes as being somehow misplaced or as stated here, essentially out of line and somehow representative of a dilluted fanbase full of banwagoners. However, how can one blame the fan for reacting in such a way when Manny just had the PED issues. Look at it, Ortiz was essentially a bench player when he came over, and, as a matter of fact, looked somewhat similar to a Willy MO Pena type player that was large and had power potential, but huge holes in his swing and an overall inability to be a well-rounded slugger. He then exploded into what we were all ready to dubb the best clutch hitter in the last 30 years. Time goes by, Ortiz’s success well documented, until last year when the wrist injury happened. From my standpoint, even if Ortiz didn’t do steroids or whatever, it is not the fan’s fault for turning on him so quickly in the wake of everything that is happening, this is a classic case, while disconcerting and really just a shame if not true, of guilt by association. If manny didn’t get caught with PEDs last week, this would be a bunch of what is wrong with Ortiz. Although that’s still there, the fans are reacting to the little feeling that Yankee fans have had all along about A-rod before everything went down, “is this all artificial, it seems too good to be true?” So you go from questioning if too good to be true, to your house of cards falling down around you, to it looking as if it definitely was too good to be true. Clearly people feel differently, but IMO, Ortiz is either an anomoly who happened to peak VERY late in his career (from average at 26 years old to the top slugger in the game hitting ***53*** home runs — look at the 50+ list, pretty damaging to your “clean” argument if you ask me), or he was juicing. If juicing, I say that I couldn’t feel like someone got more of what they deserved. Plenty of players could juice to do what he did, they choose not to (see Jason Bay, D Wright, Chipper Jones, etc.) and Papi deserves to be tarred and feathered down Charles if he did, not defended by pepole who feel badly for him because “he’s a nice guy.” This is baseball, unless you’re clearly a Cal Ripken-type guy, you don’t get free passes to suckdom after a few years of being highly productive, it’s just not how it works, you have to put in a LONG CAREER before you get the Greg Maddux type treatment.
As for what to do with Papi, I don’t see why benching him is not the option, makes no sense to me why we think that getting papi to hit is the solution. What if we had a time machine that said we could look ahead… Papi will do option one, moves down, and bats .210/.285/.315, does that satisfy you… or does option two, spends 2 months getting “his head on straight” against far lesser minor league tallent, comes up and hits about .265/.325/.365, does that really make you feel better. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to get a single, minor, miniscule piece of evidence from any source (even if it is your psychic), as long as it is not just “because he has been so good in the past” or along those lines (such as “because he’s papi and hes clutch and been there before and done it before and knows how to hit and can mash and blah blah”) or some other unfounded personal opinion, but rather a real piece of evidence that shows he has any promise in any way whatsoever to even remotely return to form. We call this a slump.. what was last year? We called last year an injury, we were told he would return to form in ‘09. And so here we are, hitting .200/garbage/and even worse garbage for our bat stats line in OUR 3 HOLE, while close to first, and for some god awful reason we think we need to start losing before addressing this. What ever happened to putting a team together for championships, when did we become the royals who stuck it out with a guy who was terrible because he had a contract? This is Boston.. we let Pedro, Nomar, and D Lowe leave in a 3 year span and all of a sudden we cry nostalgia when big fat mess Papi decides to be one of the worst hitters inthe game (worst #3, worst DH on all accounts). What ever happened to standards? What ever happened to totall unacceptable? This isn’t Pedroia in his rookie season having a bad april and looking to turn it around this is, as I said, big fat papi being absolutely terrible. When you feel badly for the big fella for how we as fans react, remember, if I was as bad at my job nobody would be saying they felt badly for me, because last time I checked Papi makes like $12.5 M a year, and IS A DH. Do you know what you call a DH who can’t hit, can’t play the field, can’t hustle to first if his life depends on it, and definitely cannot run the bases once he does accidentally throw the stick on the ball? You call him my dead grandmother, she’d at least be able to hit 3rd and do all that he’s doing and all you’d have to pay is the cost of her plot in my town cemetary, and she wouldn’t being juiced up on roids and crying about people getting on her back.
Really liked your comment, but one thing: he wasn’t bad last year. He got off to a slow start, went on the DL, then came back and put up numbers befitting a #3 hitter.
mmm… I disagree with you on that one, Evan. In 2008 his numbers saw a steep decline over his 2007 numers. You can atribute them in part to te famous wrist injury, but that’s no enough IMHO. There is a reason why everyone here was expecting for him to “reboud” this year. You don’t expect a “rebound” from someone who has being playing great, right?
And his October was awefull. I remember I was begging to Tito for moving him down the lineup. We lost a very close series in the end. If Tito would have showed more loyalty to the team than to one player’s feelings, maybe we could have gonne farther. J-Bay was already playing great and he played the entire playoff in the sixth spot, just because the ego of Ortiz is apparently more important than winning a ring. Not fair, in my opinion. Not fair to the whole team.
I was never expecting him to “rebound.”
When he returned from injury, he hit .277/.385/.529 the rest of the way.
Those are numbers befitting a #3 hitter, and numbers I am fine with.
I’ll say it again because most people are letting the 2008 slow start and injury color their perspective: Ortiz was fine after he returned.
It begs one to think he should be fine once he reverts to the norm, and I think that’ll happen once he gets a couple good breaks and stops hiding whatever injury he has.
Are you trying to write a book?
That was me, not sure why it showed up Anon.
Ortiz said this when speaking of the Manny situation….which I thought a bit curious…
“I try not to buy anything,” Ortiz said. “I pretty much try to use what the trainer has here. If I fail [a test] over that [stuff], what can I say, but it’s just crazy. You got to be careful.”
http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090507&content_id=4608978&vkey=news_bos&fext=.jsp&c_id=bos
No that was me. Stop lying Evan.
oh i meant # 12
I would prefer it if he took option #2.
I disagree with the theory that Ortiz is all washed up for two reasons.
#1 I can agree with PEDs being the reason for the increase in power numbers and subsequent decline. However, the use of PEDs only helps you if you have the god given ability to throw or hit the ball. Ortiz CAN hit, if it was just PEDs, his BA would still be respectable, even if he was done as a power hitter.
#2 If he is just suffering from PED withdrawl, then it’s a confidence issue, not a strength issue. If that’s the case, a stint in the minors will definitely help.
Being clutch, after all, is more a perception than anything else. If Ortiz can get his swing back to the point where he is thinking, “I’m the last guy the pitcher wants to face right now,” he will be clutch, whether or not he hits the ball out of the park, or laces a single.
I honestly hope that he can work things out without getting to either the option of hitting 7th or going to the DL.
I think we should move him to the DL in order to recover. It’s early in the year, early enough for Baldelli and Bailey to carry the load at DH for a period of time. This team will be in the playoff hunt deep into the season, Papi or no Papi, so the most important thing is to try to get him back to where he was in ‘07-’08. This is far more likely to happen with extended spring training time than in the pressure cooker that is everyday play in the Boston lineup, even at the 7 spot.
“However, the use of PEDs only helps you if you have the god given ability to throw or hit the ball. Ortiz CAN hit, if it was just PEDs, his BA would still be respectable, even if he was done as a power hitter”
So far from the truth. This is the most common misconception, IMO, about PED’s. Is it a mistake that bonds had an incredible batting average in his most prolific steroid years, in a pitcher’s park none-the-less. He didn’t get better hand-eye, or better bat speed (to a point where it’s the difference b/w hitting