Red Sox DH David Ortiz after striking out against
the Yankees (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
David Ortiz went hitless in yesterday’s Boston Red Sox loss to the New York Yankees, and sportsradio callers today are predictably up in arms about it. While none are yet justified in calling for his head – it’s only been two games, for Pete’s sake – neither are any focusing on one of the slugger’s biggest challenges: the use of an infield shift against him.
Last night, for instance, Ortiz put as good a swing on a ball as you’ll ever see and drilled it into short right field – only to discover Yankee second baseman Robinson Cano standing there to make the play. He was standing there, of course, because the Bronxians are one of several teams that shift their infielders to their left to one degree or another, hoping (a) to take an ordinary hit away from Ortiz, as happened yesterday, (b) to force Ortiz to hit the other way and thus take away some of his power, or (c) actually hit a home run, which is hard to do on demand and isn’t defensible in any event.
No one is saying it is easy to retrain oneself to place the ball differently so as to defeat the shift – if it was, Ted Williams would have done it in the 1946 World Series, during which one newspaper notably blared “Williams Bunts” as a headline. But it does cause one to wonder what the effect would have been last season had Ortiz managed to defy the defense.
One possible answer lies in an unscientific study this observer conducted of Ortiz’s 2009 hit chart. To keep the exercise simple, the sample was limited to his at bats in Boston, his home field, and in Tampa, New York, and Anaheim, home to the three teams that regularly employ the shift. A rough count shows he hit into perhaps as many as 16 ground ball outs in those venues that likely would have been hits had there been no shift. Adding these to his season total bumps his average from .238 to .268 – a 30-point jump that certainly represents many Sox runs lost given the team’s penchant for putting guys on base in front of him.
No one is suggesting that Ortiz’s problems would be over if he’d only hit away from the shift – hitting is far more complicated than that, and he might well ruin his power stroke if he gets too caught up in trying. But one wonders what kind of effect it may be having on his numbers and his mindset, and it is curious that the issue isn’t receiving more visibility.
Whatever the answer, it is unfair to relegate him to the bench on the strength of just two games even if he never again regains the clutch form that made him a Boston folk hero. Give him a month, and let’s have the conversation then.
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