After a Miniature Crisis Coming Out of the All-Star Break, Joey Ortiz is Raking Again

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Brewers' rookie infielder had a miserable month of July, and August didn't start much better. Since then, things have changed.

Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images

The neck injury that took 10 days of playing time from Joey Ortiz in July wasn't done with him when he got back. While the Brewers have gone out of their way not to rely on him all season, they began to deeply feel his absence, even once he was technically restored to the lineup. Ortiz's power appeared to be gone even when he returned from his stint on the injured list, and that state of affairs only seemed to have worsened after the team's five-day All-Star break.

From Jul. 20 through Aug. 4, Ortiz went 7-for-50, with just two extra-base hits. You can, in fact, stretch all the way back to his last home run on Jun. 25, and he was carrying a .387 OPS, as of that day in August. The Brewers had an off day between series in Washington and in an unincorporated suburban location north of Atlanta, and it couldn't have come at a better time for Ortiz.

Since the Brewers went to Georgia on Aug. 6, things have been different. His production rebounded, then stabilized (although at a lower rate than the player or the team would like). Ortiz is batting .238/.336/.419 over the last five weeks, including .296/.424/.519 in September. He's showing the power potential that made his first half so exciting, and that eluded him during his trough from the very end of June through early August. What's changed?

Well, firstly, we have to understand what broke. During that crisis in late July. Ortiz's swing fell apart. He has very good raw bat speed, but after the All-Star break, it plunged, and it stayed low for quite a while thereafter.

In a perfect world, of course, he'd live at those higher plateaus of swing speed all the time. That's not quite realistic, though. Even healthy, experienced hitters go through periods when they struggle to get off their 'A' swing. Banged-up rookies, like Ortiz was as July slumped toward August, often struggle much worse. Note the way his swing speed stayed low until the beginning of this month, though. That was because Ortiz was trying to do something even more important than swinging fast: delivering the barrel to the ball with accuracy. See, during that late July-early August period, he was also struggling to meet the ball squarely--struggling in that regard, in fact, about as badly as any hitter has all season.

After bottoming out like that, with such lousy and infrequent contact for a period of about two weeks, Ortiz spent much of August rebuilding the relationship between his swing and his approach, ensuring that he could start to consistently handle big-league pitching again. That sounds daunting, because it is. Ortiz and the Brewers worked through it masterfully, though, and he's now come out on the other side. We're back to a version of Ortiz who can both control the strike zone (as he has done well almost all year) and create some damage on contact. Here's a heat map showing his exit velocity by pitch location during that long slump:

And here's the same chart for the period since Aug. 6:

Covering the whole plate that way is profoundly valuable for Ortiz, and for the team. It's evidence of the way he's evolving, because early in the season, even when he was hot, he was largely just crushing the ball left belt-high over the inner third. Increasingly, he can hit the ball with authority even when a pitcher executes the pitch they want.

Whether Ortiz will move up in the batting order, particularly against righties, remains to be seen. If nothing else, though, his resurgence has made the bottom of the Milwaukee lineup more dangerous, and in turn, that has catalyzed some rallies for the hitters at the top. The way this rookie has handled adversity of various kinds throughout this season is remarkable, and come October, he looks ready to step up and perform like a veteran.

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[Brian]

Great story, I forgot all about his neck injury, I sure do hope he is back to form for the playoffs and also Rhys Hoskins gets it back to being a .240 hitter for the playoffs which I know he can be after reaggravating his knee way back in May.