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On slow starts and small sample sizes

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Last night, after he failed to record a hit, reporters pestered David Ortiz with questions about his slow start, and the embattled Red Sox DH erupted in the greatest example of Mad Libs ever. “You guys wait ’til [expletive] happens, then you can talk [expletive]. Two [expletive] games, and already you [expletives] are going crazy,” he said. “What’s up with that, man? [Expletive]. [Expletive] 160 games left. That’s a [expletive]. One of you [expletives] got to go ahead and hit for me.”

Earlier today, Fack Youk, in a post that fills in the graphic-language blanks, takes on the topic of small sample sizes and the early goings. We know that slow starts don’t mean much in the grand scheme of a 162-game season. We know that players will eventually regress to the means, get their hits, hit their home runs. We know that we can’t judge Ortiz on eight plate appearances and can’t proclaim the return of Joba based on two strike outs. Yet, so many people — from players to fans to reporters — do so. Anyway, check out what Matt had to say at Fack Youk, and remember that there are “[expletive] 160 games left.”

The decline and fall of David Ortiz

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It was Thursday evening in New York when the Angels walked off with a 5-4 win against the Red Sox. Jeff Mathis singled home Reggie Willits in the bottom of the 12th to end what was a very frustrating game for the Red Sox.

No one was worse for the Sox on Thursday than David Ortiz. He went 0 for 7 with three strike outs and single-handedly left 12 runners on base. After the game, he sounded like a defeated man. “I’m sorry, guys. I don’t feel like talking right now. Just put down, Papi stinks,'” he said to reporters.

For Ortiz, the 0 for 7 capped off what had been one terrible start to the season. He is hitting .208/.318/.300 and has not homered since September 22. Brett Gardner, the Yanks’ outfielder, has a slugging percentage nearly .125 points higher than Ortiz’s, and Papi has been benched this weekend as the Sox take on the Mariners.

Around baseball, Ortiz’s spectacularly bad spring has been the talk of the town. Earlier today, The Times Bats blog profiled Ortiz and three others off to uncharacteristically slow starts. Alex Belth compares Ortiz to Mo Vaughn, another large DH no longer a force at the plate after his age 33 season.

Where Vaughn suffered through a wrist injury though, Ortiz is simply missing Manny. As Ed Price tweeted, Ortiz has hit .240 with a .783 OPS since the Red Sox shipped Manny away. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence. After all, Jason Bay has put up some very good offensive numbers too. Perhaps Manny’s protection forced pitchers to attack Ortiz. Either way, that’s not what the Red Sox expected for their $12.5 million.

For me, this decline has been bittersweet for a number of reasons. First of all, I basically predicted it back in January 2006 when I analyzed Ortiz’s contract situation for the now-defunct Talking Baseball blog. I’m also glad that the Yankees no longer have to face the David Ortiz of old who would refuse to make outs against New York.

As a fan of the game though, I hate to see the competition go out this way. I’d see the Yanks face Ortiz and win that battle while he’s at his finest. We can watch A.J. Burnett or Joba Chamberlain strike out Ortiz now, but that’s hardly an accomplishment today. With 30 strike outs in 157 plate appearances, that’s all Ortiz does anymore.

Now Ortiz may just be slumping. It’s still early, and while 157 plate appearances is a decent number, I’m not ready to dance on the baseball grave of Big Papi until the season is over. For now, though, an era is drawing to a close, and while the Yanks didn’t always win, that era was never lacking for drama, excitement and good old baseball.

Same rivalry, new faces

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When David Ortiz takes to the field plate later tonight, it will mark his 101st regular season game as a member of the Red Sox facing the Yankees. Since 2003, no one on Boston has faced the Yankees more often than Ortiz has, and he knows the rivalry quite well.

Lately, though, Ortiz has been a shell of the player who killed the Yankees in 2003 and 2004. As Alan Schwarz detailed yesterday, Ortiz is an out-of-shape DH-only player, and those do not age gracefully. While his bat has shown signs of life over the last few games, he is hitting .220/.294/.322 with no home runs in the early going. He’s either primed for a breakout or has entered what we’ll diplomatically call the “decline” phase of his career.

Yesterday, in preparation for this weekend’s big series against the Yankees, the Red Sox vet offered up some unsolicited advice to the Yankees. Particularly, Ortiz decided to warn Joba Chamberlain about his past headhunting. “None of that, man — just play the game the way it’s supposed to be, and that’s about it,” Ortiz said “This is a guy, as good as he is, the next step for him will be to earn respect from everybody in the league. He’s not a bad guy, but when things like that happen, people get the wrong idea.”

Apparently, Kevin Youkilis can’t speak up for himself.

Anyway, when Joba takes the mound tonight, he’ll get the hero’s welcome in Boston, but he has a game to win. He has to keep his emotions — and his fastball — under control, and he will have to go toe-to-toe with the Red Sox ace. Last year, he outdueled Josh Beckett in Boston to announce his arrival as a Major League starter. This year, he’ll have to go toe-to-toe with Jon Lester, arguably a better pitcher than Beckett. It is no small task, and with boos raining down, it won’t be the easiest environment in which Joba must pitch.

But Chamberlain isn’t the only player due for some Boston scorn. While A-Rod, the object of New England’s collective affection, won’t be there, Mark Teixeira will, and you know what they say about a lover scorned. As the Yanks’ first baseman said to The Star-Ledger, he expects a hostile crowd tonight. “I’m sure they’ll be heavy boos,” Teixeira said. “I would expect nothing less from those fans. I would expect nothing less than tons of boos and tons of energy in the stadium. This is a great rivalry. It’s going to be a fun weekend.”

The Red Sox will be booing at Teixeira because he had the audacity to take a better offer in New York when the team’s owner refused to up his deal by another $10 million. Teixeira reminded anyone listening of that fact yesterday. “I enjoyed talking with the Red Sox all offseason,” he said. “There’s no question why the Red Sox are in the position they are. Because he’s an incredible GM and they have a great organization. There were opportunities for every team that I dealt with. Every team had a chance. Every team was given an opportunity to make their best offer. In the end, the Yankees made the best and it was a great fit for me.”

And so it goes. It’s the same game with new faces, and those new faces are fitting in off the field quite nicely. Welcome to the Red Sox/Yankees Rivalry 2009.

Ortiz, Cano defend Presinal

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Yesterday’s not-so-new revelations that A-Rod had trained with the Angel Presinal generated a good amount of discussion on RAB. While Presinal has been linked to PED use via the Mitchell Report and various journalistic investigations, numerous Dominican players have turned to him as a trainer.

Today, The Times notes that MLB is again turning a wary eye toward Presinal in light of the revelations that he trained with A-Rod during the period of the Yankee slugger’s admitted PED use. While Presinal has engaged in “he said/he said” battle with Major League Baseball officials over Juan Gonzalez’s 2001 steroid use, MLB has formally banned Presinal from the game in the U.S.

Back home in the DR, however, it is a different story. Presinal trained the Dominican Republic WBC team in 2006, and yesterday both David Ortiz and Robinson Cano defended their trainer.

This is, of course, a dicey situation. Cano said he wasn’t concerned about being, as Kat O’Brien put it, “guilty by association,” but with the way the steroid witch hunts are conducted, the company one keeps weights heavily upon the court of media — if not public — opinion. Hopefully, Presinal’s steroid transgressions are things of the past because the players who swear by him are not inclined to stop.

What Ortiz said

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In about four hours, Alex Rodriguez is going to face death by media. The venerable and not-so-venerable members of the sports media are going to gather in Tampa as A-Rod, flanked by a bunch of Yankee lifers, faces spontaneous questions from the keepers of the press for the first time since his televised confession to Peter Gammons last week.

When the dust settles, again, around A-Rod, the media will have cared far more than PED-fatigued fans do. A-Rod will, of course, hear boos when the Yanks hit the road, and he will probably hear boos when the Yanks return to the Bronx on April 16. But how is that different from any other year? This press conference will truly be the media trying to bury a broken man while attempting to somehow atone for decades of ignoring the clubhouse story that was unfolding right before their very eyes.

Now, we can bury the media some other time. This morning, let’s talk about someone else speaking out against steroid use in baseball. This player — a very prominent member of the Boston Red Sox — exploded onto the baseball scene in 2003, and Yankee fans always viewed this gregarious player with a raised eyebrow. Of course, that ignores the fact that he had a stellar rookie campaign, battled injuries in Minnesota and was generally misused by his manager before arriving in a hitter-friendly park with arguably the best right-handed hitter of his generation backing him up in the line up. (And that’s just a case of “who really knows?”)

Yesterday, David Ortiz criticized steroid use in baseball in a lengthy interview with Nick Cafardo. YFSF highlighted the interesting bits — and remember that A-Rod and Ortiz are very close friends:

“I think that the A-Rod situation, it was a little bit tough for the game,” Ortiz said. “Talking about the best player all the way around. At the same time, people have to give the guy credit because he came out with what he said at the point of his career where he had done it all. On top of that, that was what? Six years ago? The guy has put up numbers his whole career. It was one thing that he said that caught my attention was that he was young and at the time. . . . sometimes you make the wrong decision like he did. He’s been playing clean and he’s still producing. He’s still been the best player in the game. If I’m a fan and I had to judge the guy, I would put that in the past and move forward. The guy, he works hard, man. He’s still doing his thing. He’s still got nine more years on his contract where he’s definitely gonna do some damage still.”

[snip]

“I think you clean up the game by the testing. I test you, you test positive, you’re going to be out. Period,” Ortiz said. “If I test positive using any kind of banned substance I’m going to disrespect the game, my family, my fans and everybody. And I don’t want to face the situation so I won’t use it. I’m sure everybody is on the same page.”

“From what I’ve seen right now from the testimony that Alex gave, I would say it was very low the percentage that wasn’t using it. Like he said, that’s what was going around the league at the time. What else do you want? But in 2004 when they came out with the testing, I guarantee the percentage has been going down.”

Ortiz expressed his belief that around 80 or 90 percent of the game is now clean. Who knows if that’s naivete, undetectable designer drugs, the truth or some combination of all three? We just don’t know anymore.

Meanwhile, Paul, one of the Sox fans at YFSF, has an apt conclusion to his post on the matter. “One thing I’m surprised no one asked,” he writes, “especially given Ortiz’s previous comments about the GNC products from the Dominican, is whether he’s one of the 103 other names.”

The problem with David Ortiz’s statement is that you can’t hop in a time machine and ban everyone in 1999. You can’t really save baseball from the past. Ortiz is hitting on all the right things if you care about PED use and the pall it may or may not have cast over the game. But in the end, it’s not really Ortiz who is right.

Rather, the one person who was right is the one most overlooked and quite tarred by the scandal. On May 17, 2005, Mark McGwire said, “I’m not here to talk about the past.” That’s really the best thing right now for baseball. Officials, players, agents, owners can point as many fingers as they won’t, but the only action that will solve this PR problem is to move forward.

For now, though, we’ll just have to a few hours until A-Rod is ready to talk about the past.

Is that right, fatass?

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From the Daily News:

“I’ve been here for five years and we don’t need to worry about nobody right now. Everybody needs to worry about us.”
-David Ortiz

If that’s not a bulletin board quote, I don’t know what is.

But wait, there’s more. From The Boston Globe:

“…the Red Sox pretty much have cemented themselves in a position where I don’t think they can be caught.”
-John Smoltz

Gee, sounds like Smoltzy is starting to sound like CHB.

Hat tip (begrudgingly so) to The Joy of Sox.