Not certain what's more surprising this season, Ortiz slumping like never before in his career or that there's been so little chatter about it on this board.

It appeared that he may have begun to snap out of it after have he texted messaged Tito on Mon. (4/14) & asked back into the lineup & delivered with 2 hits. However, after last night's popup to 2b in the 9th with 2 on & 1 out, it appears that he's as frustrated at the plate & feeble with the bat as he's ever been.

I sometimes wonder if he's suffering from Steve Sax syndrome of the bat. It sometimes appears to me as though he's over thinking everything & every day trying to reinvent his stance and his swing?! Does he need a sports psychologist or is there an underlying injury? Also, he wintered in the US/greater Boston for the first time this past off season vs. retreating to warmer climates due to the knee surgery so I also have to wonder if his offseason routine (aside from the surgery & recovery itself) having varied so differently from what was his norm is still impacting him.

Discuss away..........




As an aside: Ortiz stands at 267 career homeruns. He’s just 33 shy of the 300 milestone which I believe would put him somewhere around 115 on the all time list & pass a few Yanks to boot (Roger Maris – 275, Paul O’Neill – 281 & Bernie Williams – 287). Here’s rooting he turns this around & gets there this year....at the age of 32 no less!


He's in the lineup tonight (4/16) vs. NY, hopefully the Bronx cheers lights a fire in him.

It sure doesn't appear to be an injury, at least not to me. He is much more upright when swinging the bat now then he used to be and it looks like he is pulling off on pitches on the outside. It looks like it might actually be his batting stance more than anything. Maybe the change in off season preparation did something to him but if I remember correctly he was doing real well in ST and then in Japan.

I suppose it could also be simply that he is worried about putting too much strain on his surgically repaired knee. Like he is scared to drive with it for fear of injuring it again. Overall it looks to me like he is more timid and not as confident as usual.

David has said that while his knee is less than 100%, that it is not the reason he is slumping... he admits its entirely mental.

I think its a mental thing as well, and I would point to his offseason knee surgery interrupting his offseason regimen. Not weight/workout stuff, but he didnt start hitting until months later than usual... he's still trying to find his swing.

In an effort to get rid of megathreads I changed the focus of this topic. Please, please, please pick a focus for your threads and not a blanket topic, everyone else will appreciate it and it cuts down the 'noise' typically found in large threads. PM me if you have any questions. Thanks!

- TLB

Excellent move.

I'm not ready to worry yet about Papi.

Here's what I want to know (because I haven't watched the games, other than a few) as I'm only listening at this point:

1) Is he swinging at bad pitches?
2) When he fouls it off, is it a smash/liner?
3) Is he hitting it hard but right at people?

The radio only gives a hyped impression, what do your eyes say to you guys?

Papi is definitely standing much taller at the plate than he used to. Its making his strike zone bigger.

Also, every f****** ump in the league is loving this and joyfully calling anything near the outside corner. All of Ortiz's bitching is finally coming back to bite him in the butt.

1) No, I don't think he is swinging at a lot of bad pitches. He is taking bad swings at a lot of good pitches.
2) His fouls are not smashes/liners.
3) He is not hitting the ball hard at all, fair or foul. Most of his recent hits have been well-placed pops or grounders.

Concern about the knee has made him alter his stance, which has enlarged his strike zone and made it more difficult to hit the outside pitches. The slump is wearing on him mentally. He needs to rethink his stance (Dave Magadan, paging Dave Magadan. Please report to the batting cage immediately.) and stop thinking to much about everything else. Then he'll be fine.

I've noticed that he is fouling off more and more outside pitches. Early on in his Sox career he used to go opposite field at will, but he has seemed to resign himself to being a pull hitter the past couple seasons (not that the results have been bad). This is leading to a lot of warning track shots and grounders to the right side. He has also fought some of these pitches off, but I'd like to see him go with the pitch once in a while to let teams know that he can indeed do it and keep them honest.

The upright stance scares me a bit, because that is how he hit back in Minnesota and it exposed a lot of holes in his swing. Getting lower is one of the things that turned him into the hitter he became since coming to Boston.

For me, what's more worrying than anything else is the hesitation and half-swings at even the fattest of pitches. A guy who is struggling who decides to swing at something off the plate doesn't surprise me, a guy who is struggling who can't decide whether or not to swing at a 88 mph fastball down the middle on a 3-1 count and hits into a check-swing double play worries and surprises me a whole lot more. It looks about as bad as the radio guys are making it sound, SSA. It just looks like he has no idea what to swing at, and how to swing at some of the pitches. If a guy's swing is so obviously off that Joe Morgan and the opposing team's color man (during the Indians series) can easily diagnose part of the problem (he's only swinging outside with his arms, his lower half is bailing out on anything over the outside half of the plate), there's something seriously wrong.

What has me worried is that we're three weeks into the season and there haven't been any adjustments. It worries me because I'm sure he's gone over tape to look for differences in his stance/swing, but it may be that he cannot fix it. If that is the case AND if he is still favoring his knee that badly a trip to the DL to completely heal his knee might be a good idea.

I was thinking a DL stint as well. I'd almost like to see how he does against the Angels though as he was great against them last year:


( and that includes 0-8 at Angel Stadium.)

It's funny that he did so well on the bad knee last year, that with a healthier knee, he should have 5 HR's by now. Ortiz admittedly said he's not seeing the ball well right now. Magadan says when we see him hit line shots the opposite way he's on his way. Everything so far to the left has been soft. Now granted they are 2 run doubles for yankee hitters, but it's discouraging for him.
Give him a week, then sit him. Ellsbury in left and Manny at DH ain't that bad.

I have to agree, it's his stance/knee. I think he probably either doesn't have the flexiblity in the knee or the faith in the knee to put all his weight on it - doesn't really matter which it is. If he says he's not "seeing the ball well", I think that's a fabrication for the real issue - the knee. If it's truly a matter of not seeing the ball well out of the pitcher's hand, I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for Papi. Anyone who suffered through the end of Rice's career will remember he had a severely steep drop off, mostly due to failing vision.

Boston is hitting .295 as a team even with Ortiz @ .160.
With all the offseason talk about Manny's age, it's Big Papi who looks like the older player right now.

He seems to be putting things back together now, so that's good.
I just hope he keeps it up, and it wasn't just a product of facing Texas Rangers pitching.

On April 12 Ortiz went 0-5 and his batting average fell to .070; the team had an off day on the 13th. Since then he's batting .306 (11-36) but until today had only one extra base hit. Hopefully those two doubles today and the home run Friday are finally the start of some power.

All to left field, which is a good sign in that during the peak (valley, I guess) of the slump he was rolling over on everything. No towering shots to RF yet, though. That's the next step. Then he's back.

His stance has looked a lot better at plate as of late. He is standing as upright anymore and is apparently feeling more comfortable putting weight on his knees. This is a great sign.

Seems to me that he has started (occasionally) pulling the ball hard, just not way up in the air. I'd say he is 9/10s of the way out of it. Let's just hope the Angels' pitchers don't put him right back in it.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to justify the cost of EI this year since I'm trying to clear off debt as I prepare for grad school apps etc. So I have to rely on other's descriptions.

The hits he got this weekend were they hard hit driven balls or were they more flukey? Is he getting better swings now? Some have said he's starting to sit lower in the stance. If it's true, I hope that's a good sign he's getting back to the mechanics that he had previously.

One of the doubles yesterday was misplayed sun and/or wind ball. It should have been an out. He did hit some hard balls that did not fall in for hits. Sometimes, the ones you square are right at someone. Sometimes, the poorly hit ones fall in for a hit. So, I think things are balancing balancing out.

Depends where you draw the line for fluky.

The HR he hit was one of those high flies into the Monster seats that was on its way down and probably an out at (or in front of) the warning track in most parks. One of his singles was a hard grounder that Ian Kinsler (Rangers 2B) fielded in short RF, but he had to go far to his left to get it and couldn't get enough on the throw to get Ortiz on a very close play. I don't know if other 2B turn that into an out, or if other 2B wouldn't even have gotten there and it would have been a solid single right through the shift.

He's generally putting together much better at bats. The fact that he's going to left field at all is a good sign (even if he did get lucky on the one that kxray mentioned). But again, still waiting for that big shot to deep right field.

Umps are all still breaking his balls on pitches off the plate, too. Pitchers get every questionable call since he's been struggling... and some that were just dead wrong, not even in the questionable range.

Well, his first HR of the year, in Oakland, was an absolute no doubter. I was there. He had another hit that day also. I thought his slump was over with back then, hope it is now.

Hopefully, Weaver should be another good person for him to face, since his record against him is pretty good. (5 for 10 with 2 homers)

According to http://www.hittrackeronline.com/index.php (one of my favorite baseball sites) it would have been a HR in only 7 out of the 30 major league parks.

Papi taking a seat tonight. Moss back up on the ML team. Per the Globe:

Brandon Moss has joined the Red Sox in Tampa, and the corresponding move might be a trip to the DL for Sean Casey. Casey suffered a strained right hip flexor in last night's game.

In other news, David Ortiz was in the original Red Sox lineup, but a second lineup has been posted, and Ortiz has been scratched.


I'm ok with giving him some time. It takes Manny or Drew (in this case it's Drew at DH) off the turf for a night and gives Papi a chance to rest his knee - which, according to today's Globe game story, is an issue.

Found this nugget in an ESPN fantasy mass email I recieved this morning:

'David Ortiz, DH, Red Sox (RBIs at home: 17; RBIs on the road: 4)'Big Papi is more like the Wizard at home; on the road, maybe the scarecrow, flopping around on the ground trying to collect all that lost straw?'


So I was curious....here's the rest of his home vs. away stats (current as of 5/1):




I also found this surprising:

Team Leaders in RBI (thru 5/1):
Ortiz - 21
Manny - 20
Youk - 15
Drew - 13
Pedroia - 13

A lefty hitting better at Fenway than on the road. No way! Tell us more, ESPN!

Papi has hit pretty well on the road in his Sox career, but is more of a power threat on the road than he is at home, where he is more of a doubles hitter and effectively uses the opposite field to his advantage. For the most part I think you're going to find that to be true for the majority of MLB players.