Well, the Sox aren’t off to the best start, but who cares if a three-game losing streak comes in April or June, right? One bright spot, however, has been the early power surge by David Ortiz, who didn’t hit his first home run last season until April 23rd.
Papi has two homers in his first three games of 2011. Is he ready to put up a monster season? Lets take a step back and look at it this way…
While his first home run came off of a lefty (Darren Oliver), whom we here at Fire Brand have fully documented that Papi mightily struggles against (lefties in general, that is), when we take a look at the pitch location and movement, we see that Papi simply capitalized on a mistake. Oliver threw three 89 MPH fastballs to Ortiz, the third of which was left out over the plate, right in Papi’s power zone. The fastballs had very little movement and at 89 MPH, where basically sitting ducks.
Oliver’s pitch location to Papi…(via the awesome BrooksBaseball.net)
Then, a day later, he hit a homer off of Rangers’ starter Colby Lewis. Lewis’s pitch location to Papi…
While Ortiz has struggled with fastballs up-and-in in the past, this one (about 89 MPH) didn’t get in enough. Papi actually got under this fastball just a bit and the ball ended up barely clearing the fence in right field. If that pitch had been 91 MPH, it’s probably a fly-out.
There are two conclusions I can (kind of) draw from a super small sample size of Ortiz at-bats in 2011.
1. His timing is right on to start the season, as he is taking advantage of weak fastballs that are elevated in the strike-zone.
2. Better (and faster) fastballs probably still beat him in both cases, especially with the location by Lewis.
I think we were all on the same page when it came to Big Papi this offseason. The data showed that he was likely to struggle against left-handed pitching and that his AVG wouldn’t be his calling card in 2011. However, it was clear from last season that he still knows how to drive the ball out of the yard.
Three games is only three games and just like the Sox could have been swept in June instead of April, Ortiz could (will) end up slumping at some point and go weeks without a long-ball. At least we know he can still crush 89 MPH fastballs. I still believe that Papi will end up right about where everyone projected him at (My projection was: .265/.367/.515 with 28 HR and 96 RBI). That’s one heck of a season by any standard, just temper your expectations despite the great start.