Red Sox Diaries

The Red Sox had no shortage of chances to win on Thursday against the Angels. Boston had a runner in scoring position and less than two outs during the 9th, 10th and 12th innings but never managed to drive anyone in, eventually losing 5-4 in the bottom of the 12th. It was Boston's second series in Los Angeles this season, and both times the Sox have dropped two out of three contests.

Why did Boston only score four runs, despite putting 19 men on base? It was especially unusual because the number 9, 1 and 2 hitters combined to get on 13 of those times, perfectly setting up what should be the meat of the order. But David Ortiz continued his season-long struggles, going 0-for-7 with three strikeouts and stranding 12 baserunners (only three fewer than he has driven in so far this year). He made the third out of the inning each of his last FIVE times up, and only left the infield twice in his seven at bats. Even though Ramon Ramirez used just 16 pitches to get eight outs, the bullpen couldn't hold out forever.

Plenty has been written and said regarding Big Papi's drastic drop-off in production, and today made it pretty clear that he isn't a threat to turn it around anytime soon. This places manager Terry Francona in an incredibly unenviable position: he can either continue to have his lineup bogged down by the dead weight in the three hole, or find some way to tell the man who has won countless games for him over the past five seasons that he just doesn't have it anymore and that he's hurting the team by hitting third.

So far, Francona has chosen the first option--and it seems like he's going to stick with it. Last Monday's Boston Globe had a quote from Francona in which he said, "I've been standing there for five years patting him on the fanny, driving in all those runs and wining games. Now when he needs a little help, I don't want to be the one to abandon him. He's had a tough month and he acknowledged that and he's frustrated and wants to do better. We need him. So now it is my turn to be there for him and help him and that's what I'll try to do. Being impatient or giving up on someone is not the answer to what we're trying to do."

That perfectly embodies what Francona is all about as a manager. His unfailing loyalty is why his players love him. But, right now, it's also costing his ballclub wins--and until Ortiz regains his old form or Francona makes a change, it might cost the Sox a lot more than that.

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After Grady Little's infamous boneheaded move in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, any manager would have seemed like an upgrade. Francona was a bit of a surprise pick to lead Boston, considering that he lost at least 85 games in each of his four season managing the Philadelphia Phillies. His interview was reportedly excellent, and he was regarded as having a smart baseball mind and getting along well with his players (particularly Curt Schilling, who the Sox were trying to acquire), so general manager Theo Epstein and company gave Francona the job.

Frankly, Francona's main job in 2004 was to not screw anything up--particularly with the pitching staff. His Opening Day rotation started 157 of 162 regular season games and Epstein went out and got a terrific closer in Keith Foulke during the offseason. The lineup was obviously in pretty good shape too, ranking at or near the top in almost every statistical category. Other than the Gabe Kapler/Trot Nixon platoon in right field and the shortstop situation (Pokey Reese got 268 at bats that season!) before the trade for Orlando Cabrera, every other position was settled.

Francona has always had a team capable of contending for a title--he has never needed to manufacture runs by calling bunts and steals, or shuffle 10-15 guys into his rotation because of injuries and ineffectiveness. Besides sending Dave Roberts in the bottom of the ninth of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, I honestly can't recall one memorable decision that Francona has made during the course of a game. As far as handling the bullpen goes? He's fairly middle-of-the-pack (and it helps to have Jonathan Papelbon back there, that's for sure).

He has primarily had to worry about keeping everyone in the clubhouse happy, and he deserves a lot of credit for what he has done in that department. Francona put up with Manny Ramirez for four and a half years, and he has always helped integrate new guys into the clubhouse without any problems. Has there ever been a time where a player has called out Francona in the media, or where he has publicly feuded with a player? I don't think so, which means Francona has taken care of the few problems that there have been (even most of the Manny stuff) in-house. This is a sharp contrast to a lot of the historically great teams, like the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees of the 1970s.

But Francona's greatest strength is at the root of his greatest flaw. His players will run through a wall for him because he shows so much confidence in them. Much of that confidence tends to be based on past performance, though--Francona tends to reward players for what they used to be, not what they are. He gave Mark Bellhorn 335 at bats in 2005, and the second baseman hit .216 with an OPS+ of 81. That same year, Keith Foulke remained in the closers' role until July 4--by which point his ERA was on the wrong side of 6.00 and he had blown four saves in 19 chances. Also in 2005, Alan Embree pitched in 43 games with an ERA of 7.65, and Kevin Millar hit in the fifth or sixth spots the majority of the season despite a slugging percentage below .400. These were the guys who helped him win the World Series the year before, and he wasn't about to give up on them. The problem was that they deserved to be given up on.

The same trend has happened with Jason Varitek. His slide began in 2006, when he hit .238, yet Francona still batted him fifth or sixth for more than half of the season. It even happens to players who Francona has no reason to show any loyalty to. Julio Lugo hit exclusively in the leadoff spot until June 10 in 2007; he hit .214 during that time. Francona trotted Eric Gagne out of the bullpen in multiple high-pressure situations late in that year, even though he had already proven to be incapable of getting big outs. Gagne single-handedly cost Boston four games in August.

What about the other side of it, players who Francona stuck with and it paid off because they broke out of prolonged slumps? Unfortunately, I couldn't find any examples of that happening. And now he faces a similar situation to all of the ones listed above with Ortiz. I understand Francona's difficult dilemma--Big Papi is an icon, beloved in and out of the clubhouse. Now, I'm not saying Ortiz should be removed from the lineup yet. But what's the harm in sitting down with Ortiz again and telling him that he's being dropped to sixth or seventh in the order so he can continue to work things out and the team can get more production out of the third spot? He's a competitor and a team player; he'll understand that it's best for the team, as hard as it is to admit.

It's a conversation that needs to happen, the sooner the better--or else the Sox might kick away a golden opportunity to capture their third World Series this decade. No team is going to win it all with its third hitter (and designated hitter!) slugging .300 and getting on base less than one-third of the time. While loyalty is nice, at the end of the day winning is nicer.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

The Boston Globe's Adam Kilgore wrote an interesting summation of the troubles David Ortiz has been having this year at the plate. Check it out here.

Taking a look at his season thus far, it's clear he's having a ton of problems at the plate. Kilgore highlights his bat speed as the main problem. Ortiz has been diagnosed with a case of late hands, not getting to a loaded position quickly enough -- hence the strikeouts on 87 mph fastballs. Bat speed undoubtedly declines as the player ages, and problems that deal with the wrist (like Ortiz had last year) and hands make it especially difficult to compensate. With Big Papi late on his swings, it becomes common sense for pitchers to pound him on the inside, making it harder for his hands to come through and for him to get his bat around in time. Speaking from experience, both on the mound and in the box, anything looks like it's coming in hard when jammed inside at the wrists.

Another interesting element of this is that Ortiz has never been able to hit power pitching that well. In his career against pitchers that strikeout or walk more than 28 percent of their batters faced, Ortiz hits just .214 with one home run every 18.9 at bats, both of which are well below his overall averages. (His baseball-reference.com splits can be found here.) He has always fed on guys who so-called finesse pitchers (who strike out or walk less than 24 percent of the batters they face), sporting a career .315 batting average and .584 slugging percentage. But last year, it wasn't just the flamethrowers that gave Big Papi trouble--he also only hit .267 against finesse pitchers (albeit that was depressed by an abnormally low .225 BABIP). It doesn't seem to matter how hard guys throw anymore--if they know to throw it at Ortiz's hands, he doesn't stand much of a chance.

So, with no bat speed and an inability to get to pitches covering half the plate, that spells the end of his career, right? Not necessarily. Big Papi needs to adapt and become a better hitter upstairs. He needs to be smart, lay off the inside pitches and swing at his pitch. Unfortunately, he hasn't been doing that. He's swinging at nearly 30 percent of all pitches outside the zone (28.3 O-Swing%) and over 50 percent of all pitches in general. That's not too bad, until you couple it with the fact that he's making record-low contact on his swings, at 73.7 percent, when he has generally hovered around 80 percent in the past.

Now that all the doom and gloom has been laid out, it should be clarified that his days as a productive cog in the middle of the lineup are not over. He can still drive the ball, the one silver lining in his struggles. In fact, his line drive rate is at 23.7 percent, higher than usual. He just needs to make more consistent contact with the ball, because clearly, he can still hit it hard. Here's an excellent example of how he looks when he's right. At 36 seconds into the clip, when the ball is halfway to the plate, he's loaded. The more important thing here though, is the location. He needs to hit HIS pitch. He's been lured by the fast one inside, when his hands are not quick enough at this stage of his career for that.

MLB.com has gone so far as to say he's heating up. I'm not quite sure about that, yet. He can still hit the ball hard when he gets one in his wheelhouse and he's the single most clutch player in the league. Big Papi just needs a few weeks for his mind to catch up to his body. Once he's at that point, he can start making steps back to the player he once was.

--Orangeandblack6

When the Red Sox announced that David Ortiz had a tear in his left wrist at the end of last May, the lineup was in flux. Somebody needed to step up and replace Ortiz's production --- and some of Manny Ramirez's, too, because he was too busy pouting his way out of town. In June and July, Ramirez would conveniently duck young flamethrowers Felix Hernandez (twice) and Joba Chamberlain, among others.

The guy who manager Terry Francona later credited with saving the season was J.D. Drew, who had his best month since arriving in Boston before the previous season. Drew had a .337 BA/.462 OBP/.848 SLG line in June with 12 home runs. Interestingly, he didn't have a single multi-homer game--he spread them out and contributed in many games, as the Sox racked up a 16-11 record for the month.

The rest of Drew's season wasn't quite as impressive--he hit .267 and went yard just seven times. He also missed 33 straight games in August and September due to ailments of his own, but Ortiz was back by then and Dustin Pedroia was making his MVP case by hitting the cover off the ball.

Drew has been the ultimate tease throughout his career. When healthy and motivated, he's been one of the best hitters in the league--see his one season in Atlanta, when he was not-so-coincidentally playing for a long-term contract. He has very good power, gets on base at an excellent rate and is decent in the field.

What's so frustrating is that Drew is rarely healthy and/or motivated. And the monstrous five-year, $70 million contract that Theo Epstein gave him back before 2007 hasn't exactly paid off. Drew smacked a big grand slam in the bottom of the first inning of Game 6 against Cleveland in the ALCS two years ago, but only has 29 regular-season homers in two seasons with Boston. He also strikes out at an annoyingly high rate and is overly-patient at times.

In last night's 10-8 come-from-behind win over Baltimore, Drew put some of his best traits on display: he showcased his power, hitting a triple and a home run, and walked the other three times he was up. (He also got thrown out stealing second base in the eighth inning, the type of boneheaded move that he's prone to.) His performance was particularly key, because Ortiz and cleanup hitter Kevin Youkilis combined to go 0-for-8 with five strikeouts, stranding 11 baserunners.

Youkilis has been off to his customarily great start, but Ortiz is anything but. With Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury and Mike Lowell still struggling to get untracked, Drew is going to have to duplicate his production from last June --- and sustain it for more than just 30 days. Right now he's the best left-handed hitter they've got, which is a very frightening thought. It's time for him to start earning that hefty paycheck.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

UPDATE: Shortstop Jed Lowrie has broken left wrist and might need surgery to repair it. If that is determined to be the best course of action, he will be out for the season. Story via the Boston Globe.

OK, let's play a game called "Guess the Player." Below are the close and late statistics for an unknown active Player A and Player B. Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski likes doing this from time to time. (If you don't read his blog, do yourself a favor and start...now.) Anyway, here they are:

Player A: .322 BA, .413 OBP, .733 SLG, 33 HR, 102 RBI (307 AB over 4 years) Player B: .230 BA, .366 OBP, .367 SLG, 3 HR, 22 RBI (139 AB over 2 years)

Obviously, the second sample size is considerably smaller. But still, that's a pretty stark contrast: I think there's enough data to see a trend and make a few judgments. Player A has had a mind-boggling 18 walk-off hits, eight of which came in September or October; Player B has had just one.

You should already have figured out by now that Player A is David Ortiz. So is Player B.

Yeah, maybe that's cheating. But pretty amazing, right? (Here are the full statistics, from baseball-reference.com). There has been all sorts of debate by statheads about whether or not clutch hitting is a skill that some players are more adept at than others. Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus has a whole chapter on it in his book, "Baseball Between the Numbers." Research suggests that such ability might exist to a certain extent, but it's not very significant because of how clutch statistics vary from year to year. Plus, it doesn't seem to deviate greatly from how a batter performs in the rest of his at-bats, or at least it doesn't over an extended period of time.

David Ortiz has been the most recent example that most people point to when they argue in favor of clutch hitting ability. What he did from 2003 to 2006 (Player A) was pretty compelling evidence. He was knocking balls out of the park at a rate of one per 9.3 AB in those close and late situations. He was almost Tiger Woods-like: Big Papi seemingly came up with a big hit every time he had a chance to, just like Tiger makes every putt he has to down the stretch. Of course, there have been times when they didn't come through -- heck, they're still human -- but the instances in which they've succeeded have been so memorable and plentiful that the few failures are forgotten. The Boston Globe has a slideshow of Ortiz's 19 walk-off hits in a Red Sox uniform.

Since the end of 2006, it has been a completely different story for the affable designated hitter from the Dominican Republic. Overall, Ortiz's 2007 season was one of his best, but he only worked his late-game magic once (though, in his defense, he had a spectacular postseason as Boston won its second World Series in four years). Then last year, he wasn't able to pull off any walk-off heroics and hit below the Mendoza Line when it was close and late. In the playoffs, where his stardom flourished in 2004, Ortiz batted a measly .186 with one homer.

Now, there are all sorts of mitigating factors at play here, perhaps the most prominent of which is injuries. Ortiz played with a torn meniscus in his right knee two years ago, and he struggled with various knee and wrist ailments last season. He was also diagnosed with an irregular heart beat in late 2006, but I'm not sure if that's really had any last effects.

And let's face it, he isn't getting any younger. He's never been particularly fit, either, and players with his skill set and body type tend not to age well. Many have compared him to Mo Vaughn, who was out of baseball when he was 35 and had his last productive season three years before then (and before the Mets traded for him).

I think Ortiz's career arc is remarkably similar to that of Ted Kluszewski, a hulking first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds in the 1940s and 50s. He showed flashes of power in his first five years in the majors, then exploded at age 28 for 35+ homers in four consecutive seasons. But Kluszewski fell off a cliff and went yard just 34 times the rest of his career, reaching double digits in a season only once. Jason Giambi is another decent reference point. (Save for the whole BALCO thing...) While he still possesses great power, Giambi has only hit higher than .255 in one of his last six seasons (in other words, since turning 32).

Also, since last year's trading deadline, Ortiz has been missing the luxury of having Manny Ramirez hit behind him. Who knows how much of a role that's played -- Kevin Youkilis has held up his end of the bargain and is tearing the cover off the ball in the cleanup spot. But it certainly didn't hurt to have one of the most feared sluggers in the game on deck, at least in terms of potentially seeing better pitches to hit.

Ortiz's decline has gotten a fair amount of publicity, especially because he has not bounced back as many hoped he would so far this season. It goes without saying that it's too early to be overly concerned, though he has not been particularly productive in his last couple of Aprils.

But more than his subpar raw numbers, what worries me the most are at-bats like the one he had on Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, depending on where you were watching from) against Oakland. The Sox loaded the bases for him with two outs in the top of the 10th inning -- not a walk-off situation, but one in which he usually came through when he was in his heyday of being Captain Clutch. Brad Ziegler, a right-handed submariner, was pitching for the Athletics. He started off by throwing two straight balls to Ortiz, which was probably not something he wanted to do. Hitters like Big Papi are especially dangerous with a 2-0 count.

So Ortiz was in a clutch situation, with the platoon advantage, ahead in the count and facing a pitcher who doesn't throw particularly hard. But he still proceeded to pop the next pitch up, and A's second baseman Mark Ellis camped under it for the third out of the inning. The Sox never had a runner in scoring position again and lost after Javier Lopez melted down all-too-predictably.

But it's the top of the 10th that stuck with me. I strongly believed Ortiz was going to bang a bases-clearing double off the wall, or at the very least line a single up the middle. Maybe my expectations were unreasonable -- maybe Ortiz is on the downside of his career or just hasn't come back from his injuries well enough to be able to pick up that hit. Maybe clutch hitting is just a myth after all, and it's predominantly unpredictable or dependent on how the player is swinging the bat at the time. Ortiz has struggled this season and was 0-for-4 to that point in the game.

Whatever the reason, it just wasn't meant to be, I guess. But if he's not stepping up, someone else has to start doing so and fill that sizable void. Hopefully for Boston, Ortiz returns to wreck havoc on opposing pitchers, just like old times.

Theo Epstein and the rest of the front office can't rely on hope, though. They need to have another option or two just in case, because that lineup is downright anemic with Ortiz not hitting his weight. It looks like Lars Anderson might break into the majors a lot sooner than most expected.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)