Joey Ortiz is Fixed, and All He Had to Do Was Entirely Change Who He is at the Plate

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images

Last season, Joey Ortiz had an up-and-down rookie campaign for the Brewers. He batted .239/.329/.398, but there were long stretches during which he looked like a better hitter than that—and long stretches, especially after a neck injury that briefly sidelined him around midseason, during which he looked like a much worse one. He went through ordinary fluctuations in production. The one, defining characteristic he did demonstrate though, was both his greatest strength and (arguably) his greatest weakness: patience, bordering on passivity. 

Ortiz walked in 11.0% of his plate appearances last year. He showed an unusual ability to lay off pitches outside the zone, especially for a rookie. That's the good news. The bad news is, he drew those walks by being extremely reluctant to swing, in general—including on strikes. Of the 286 batters who came to the plate at least 300 times last year, Ortiz swung at pitches inside the zone the least often, at just 51.7%. As our @Jack Stern wrote over the winter, that's not a viable long- or even medium-term strategy in the major leagues. Opposing pitchers are too good. You'll end up in too many tough counts, or carrying your bat back to the rack too often.

Indeed, early this year, Ortiz was still swinging too infrequently, and both his swings and his takes ceased to be productive. It was a frequent topic of conversation, by mid-May: Could the team replace Ortiz? How soon could the team replace Ortiz? He just didn't look like a competent big-league hitter. Through the Crew's first 50 games, he batted .170/.226/.216.

Then, on a visit to Pittsburgh, Ortiz got some good advice, or he woke up feeling a familiar, magical tingle in his fingers, or he just decided he was sick of failing by not trying. One way or another, he hit a pitch off Pirates righthander Mike Burrows at 109.1 miles per hour off the bat, over the wall in left field. That was not only the hardest he'd hit a ball all season, but the first time he'd really gotten into one all year—certainly, the first time he'd done so in the air, or to the pull field.

Since that day, Ortiz has been fixed—although, in this case, that term refers not to being restored to a previous condition, but to being newly successful by doing a whole new thing. Starting that day, Ortiz is batting .283/.343/.414. He's only walked seven times in 111 plate appearances, but he's also only struck out 19 times. This is a completely different kind of production than what he generated last year, because it's coming from a completely different approach—but it comes out to about the same amount of productivity, and perhaps a tick more.

Ortiz isn't just swinging more over the last five weeks. He's completely altered his mindset at the plate.

There's plenty of danger in this approach, too, of course. He's swinging too much, now, at least at stuff outside the zone. So far, though, it's working. Ortiz has just two home runs since then (each of them coming Tuesday, again against the Pirates but this time at The Ueck), but he's hitting the ball much harder (with an 89.3-mph average exit velocity and a 43.1% hard-hit rate, up from 85.0 and 34.2%, respectively), thanks to swinging a full 1.0 miles per hour harder (73.3, up from 72.3) since that date.

There's been no radical change in his bat path or his tendencies, except that he's a bit earlier on most balls, because his swing is faster. The swing is faster not because of a mechanical tweak, but because he's going up there with the intention of swinging—of doing damage, rather than waiting the pitcher out and trying to draw a walk.

Next comes the fight to find homeostasis—an approach that can work week upon week and month upon month, rather than for a short stretch. Ortiz will have to retain the aggressiveness he's tapped into, while slightly reining in his swing rate. That's much easier said than done. Just by ditching his deleteriously passive approach for one that lets him generate hard contact on a consistent basis, though, Ortiz has come a long way. Now, he just has to be ready for the next round of counteradjustments from pitchers, and meet them by making his own—without retreating from the progress he's made over the last month and change.

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[gregmag]

Does it make sense to be somewhat optimistic because he has shown that he knows how to do both things — draw walks and do damage? Or is reconciling those two approaches too tough to expect he can figure it out?

[Jim French Stepstool]

It looked to me like he made a commitment to go oppo, picked up a bagful of hits that way, and that led to him getting a couple of balls he could get the bat head out on and--boom--a 2 HR day. Not that he'll ever be more than a 10-12 HR guy, but I hope he keeps the same approach. 

His hang-in-there AB vs Skenes on Wednesday was a thing of beauty.

[Michael Trzinski]

You know what is even more impressive? Working the words 'deleteriously' and 'homeostasis' into an article about hitting! @Matthew Trueblood