The David Ortiz conundrum is reaching national status. His eyes checked out, so there’s not many reasons left for his decline. Either he’s way older than we thought, or there’s something wrong with his head. Last night’s long homer and the seven game hitting streak notwithstanding, we still have to have some doubt as to when and how much Papi will rebound. Here’s one exit strategy, given by Craig Calcaterra at THT.
Even the home runs that Ortiz has hit (before last night) were not exactly rockets. Hittracker indicates that Papi just isn’t hitting the ball like he used to, and his distance on batted balls leaves much to be desired. The shiny new HITf/x has some preliminary results on who hits the ball the hardest. The top three? Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols. That should be no surprise.
Shortstop continues to be a painful position to watch, but I agree with Tito’s decision to bench Julio Lugo. He’s not hitting AND he can’t field. At least Nick Green is hitting, and putting out the effort in the field. The Sox have considered a lot of options, including reaquiring Orlando Cabrera, but want to try to wait this out until Jed Lowrie returns in a few weeks. If they could get Omar Vizquel in here on the cheap, I’d be in favor of dumping Lugo for a glove man.
A recent trade rumor has the Red Sox reportedly asking about Colorado’s Ryan Spilborghs. Spilborghs is a young player who can play all three outfield positions, and hits just enough to be useful. He is extremely patient at the plate, but is only a fair contact hitter with fair to average gap power; seems like a fastball slap hitter. He would make for a very nice right-handed 4th outfielder type, but I can’t imagine the Sox spending much to get another Rocco Baldelli, unless there’s an injury we don’t know about.
Jacoby Ellsbury has run into some injury trouble here recently, but he looks to be just fine. That’s very good news, because we don’t have anyone who can provide plus defense in CF for any extended period of time. Hopefully the walks will be easier to come by lower in the order for him.
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June 10, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Will
People should stop looking for reasons for David Ortiz’s struggles. It’s called a slump, plain and simple, albeit an impressively long and bad slump. He’ll have to hit his way out!
June 10, 2009 at 11:03 pm
redsoxtalk
Nothing would make me happier than if Papi hit his way out of this one. But at what point does a slump become a lost season? (See Bay, Jason; circa 2007). The Pirates could afford to continue to play him all that year, but we don’t have that luxury, not with NY, Toronto and Tampa all breathing down our necks.
I’m not saying we should replace him permanently at this point, but we should have some sort of insurance, just in case. That means doing our due diligence now, so that we are not caught unprepared come July 31st. That’s why you’re hearing about Theo inquiring on people like Adrian Gonzalez.