Can Joey Ortiz Get Back On Time in Time for October?

Joey Ortiz had a few things figured out. There were still times when his manager didn't like the swing decisions he was seeing, or when Ortiz appeared to get hits almost by accident, but from late May through the day he hurt his hamstring in mid-August, he was what the Brewers ask all of their players to be: a great defender, a fine baserunner, and a tough hitter to pitch to or defend. From May 22 through August 21, Ortiz batted .271/.321/.397 in 268 plate appearances. He was no world-beater, but he kept the line moving. At times, he even delivered the big hit to cash in a runners-on rally for the team.

Before that, of course, he'd wobbled on the edge of being unplayable. Since returning from his injury on September 1, he's been similarly disastrous, flirting with unwatchable. Ortiz has one of the uglier swings in the league. His extremely patient—some, including Pat Murphy, might opine that it crosses over into passivity at times—approach leads to (arguably) the latest swing in the league. He's hardly ever on time, which is why above-average bat speed still results in one of the league's lowest average exit velocities and hard-hit rates. For a while, as he warmed up, that was ameliorated slightly, but this month, it's worse than ever. Is it fixable?

First, let's establish what we mean by being 'late'. Every hitter has a different ideal contact point and swing path, so it's folly to take a single number and assess the efficacy of a player's timing. However, two numbers tend to tell us the most about timing: Attack Angle and Attack Direction. These give us the direction of movement of the barrel of the bat, relative to the ground (that's Attack Angle) and relative to the incoming pitch (Attack Direction).

You want the bat to be working uphill when it meets the ball. If it's not, you're almost certainly not getting the bat up to speed or catching the ball in front of your body, where it's possible to do damage. The more the bat is moving upward, the greater the risk of a swing and miss—but the more likely you are to pull and lift the ball with authority, or to square it up, in general. Thus, broadly, a higher Attack Angle is better—although, again, there are important exceptions.

Attack Direction is even more idiosyncratic, but most hitters do better when they've come slightly around the ball by the time they meet it. Being behind the ball increases the likelihood of contact, but it'll more often be contact to center or the opposite field, where defenses make plays more easily and hitters get less success, relative to their raw batted-ball quality. Importantly, the flatter your Attack Angle, the more Attack Direction matters; a flat Attack Angle and an opposite-field Attack Direction is hardly ever a well-struck ball.

Among qualifying hitters, this year, only one hitter has a lower average Attack Angle than Ortiz's. Now, that hitter is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., which underscores the importance of not rushing to a conclusion based on that information. When we compare Guerrero to Ortiz, though, it's easy to see how that works great for one of them—but not well at all for the other.

Here's a Statcast animation of Guerrero's typical swing, in two still photos. The first is his body position when his front foot first lands and his swing starts. The second is just after contact.

Most guys with elite bat speed, like Guerrero's, work up through the ball more than he does. Instead, he creates a wide base but stays upright; exhibits extraordinary balance throughout his swing; and still finds time to extend his arms as he gets to the ball with his very direct swing. Now, compare the above to these two shots of Ortiz's swing, at the same stages.

Whereas Guerrero's swing starts with his weight evenly distributed and everything under control, Ortiz is launching himself off his back side by the time his front foot lands. His hands are way up still held like he's in his pre-pitch stance; they start much later than the rest of his body. The early counterrotation of his front shoulder leads to the big move thereof to get him rotating quickly through the zone to reach the ball, but as you can see, that means he's not getting to the ball as far in front of his body or extending his arms as much as with Guerrero. 

These are composites of the swings of each player throughout the season. If we could show you the same animation for Ortiz just since he's returned from the injured list, it would be even more extreme. He simply doesn't have his timing back; he's not getting those hands moving nearly early enough. 

Ortiz does have a much flatter ideal attack angle than most hitters. Here's a home run from his strong middle section of the season, on a swing that had an Attack Angle of just 2°.

Sometimes, hitting for power isn't about steering the bat up into the ball, but about creating lots of bat speed and catching the lower half of it at a flat angle, creating backspin. Ortiz was perfectly able to do that for a while this year, even with an unorthodox setup and swing. The key to that, though, is having a timing mechanism and a plan, because you don't have much margin for error from this kind of swing. If this is your sweet spot and you're late on a given pitch, you quickly get to a range of Attack Angle where no one can find success.

Here's Ortiz in the series against the Pirates this weekend, being so late on a 1-0 slider that he merely fouls the ball off the other way.

That's too good a pitch to mishit that badly. Ortiz was very, very late to the hitting zone. Why? Compare the action and placement of his hands when he gets his front foot down in each case. Here's that frame for the pitch on which he homered in June.

Here's the one for the pitch in Pittsburgh.

When he was going right, this year, his trigger was quick. As soon as that front foot landed, he was driving off the back leg and his hands were moving. When he's been going badly—and especially since returning from injury, a short period during which his average Attack Angle is -2°—he's not getting the rest of the operation started quickly enough, There's a hitch, a half-moment's pause between the foot landing and the swing firing. Some hitters can survive that kind of hitch, from pitch to pitch, because their swings put them closer to being early and being a bit "late" really just leaves them on time for the ball. With Ortiz's swing and approach, he doesn't have that margin. When he's late at all (whether his reflexes just misfire slightly, or he doesn't pick up the ball well out of the hand, or he doesn't have conviction in what he's looking for and what will trigger a swing going into that pitch), he's hopeless.

This is probably fixable, but it's a tricky thing. Ortiz certainly needed time to get back into the flow of games, coming off a week and a half of down time, and if the team had a better backup shortstop or they were at a different stage of the season, he might have undergone a meatier rehab assignment en route back to the roster. He's probably a guy who should always get a week of at-bats on rehab before returning after an injury, because his timing is such a delicate thing. However, he's had that week now, and the week ahead is likely to tell us a great deal about whether he can return to the form he found for most of the summer, by the time the playoffs roll around.