It's a Breaking Ball League, and Star Brewers Rookie Joey Ortiz is a Breaking Ball Hitter

This season has not been an uninterrupted, unmitigated success for Joey Ortiz. It's been an exciting and impressive rookie campaign, but there has been injury trouble and there have been some prolonged slumps. He's hitting .251/.346/.404 on the year, which is very good, but the power potential he flashed in May (four home runs) has proved not to be the harbinger many hoped it was. Ortiz only has one homer since Jun. 25, though it did come Sunday.

To focus on what Ortiz hasn't done in his first full season in the majors would be a vicious disservice, though. He's done some incredible things, both as a third baseman who looks sufficiently qualified to slide over to shortstop next season if needed and at the plate. As a rookie, playing somewhere near every day, Ortiz has maintained a 19.0% strikeout rate and a 12.0% walk rate. He's controlling the zone as well as anyone in the Milwaukee lineup, and to do that with even moderate power makes him both impressively versatile and immensely valuable.

Let's hone in on one particular strength, though, because it's this that could make Ortiz a superstar in the lineup: He handles breaking balls from same-handed pitchers as well as any hitter in baseball.

That's an extraordinary claim, so let's provide the extraordinary evidence. There are 138 batters who have seen at least 250 breaking balls from same-handed pitchers in 2024. Among them, Ortiz's .342 weighted on-base average (wOBA) on such pitches ranks 20th. He's hit .302/.343/.460 against righties' breaking stuff. None of the 19 guys with a higher OPS than he has on same-handed breakers are rookies. The closest thing is Ezequiel Tovar, of the Rockies, who's coming up on 1,200 career plate appearances already.

Still, there are about 20 guys (give or take a few, based on whether you rank the list by wOBA or OPS) who have greater overall production on same-handed breaking balls than Ortiz. Teammate Willy Adames is, technically, the best hitter in baseball on them, at .309/.377/.681. That line is bonkers. Why, then, argue that Ortiz is the best? 

The answer starts with the understanding that what Adames and plenty of others are doing is not sustainable. You can't consistently generate a 1.000 OPS against same-handed pitchers' breaking stuff, at least without hamstringing yourself against fastballs. From there, we can add the logical next step: swinging at same-handed pitchers' breakers isn't always a good idea at all. At the very least, we can specifically say that it's good not to chase them outside the zone. We should also control for contact rate when a batter does swing. If they strike out on a slider in the dirt, everyone notices that, but what about when they swing through a 2-1 hanger? That doesn't show up in one's OPS against a given pitch type, but it's very important.

Well, of those same 138 batters, only eight chase those breakers outside the zone less often than does Ortiz. Among those, the only rookie is Oakland's Max Schuemann. Schuemann, however, whiffs on nearly 40% of his swings against such pitches--not just the ones outside the zone, but all same-handed breakers. That's not abnormal. Kyle Schwarber, another very disciplined hitter on those offerings, whiffs even more than that when he does swing. It's not true of Ortiz, though. He's 15th-lowest of the 138 in whiff rate on swings against same-handed breaking balls, and only a very small handful of hitters are both more disciplined and better at making contact than he is.

As you can see, Ortiz keeps superb company in that lower left quadrant of the chart, but it's even more dazzling when you dig in on, say, Juan Soto. The fearsome Yankees slugger and paragon of plate approach hardly ever expands his zone for lefty breakers, and he makes contact at a very impressive rate when he does offer at that pitch type from those hurlers. Yet, Soto has just a 3.8-degree average launch angle when he puts a lefthander's breaking ball in play. For that reason, while he's very good at avoiding having at-bats resolved on those pitches, when he does, his OPS is a mere .714. One great way to avoid being tempted to chase same-handed hurlers' breaking stuff out of the zone is to have a swing that's not well-suited to doing anything with that pitch type, anyway.

That's not the case with Ortiz. He squares the ball up plenty when he puts righty breaking stuff in play. Again, he's not generating thunderous power, but he hits the ball with sufficient authority, keeps it off the ground, and adds value on so many other offerings--either by letting a pitch go by for a ball, or by fouling off a breaking ball in a two-strike count. He's a uniquely tough out for a righty who leans on their slider, and that brief description captures an ever-increasing share of the league.

It's too early to tell what Ortiz's ceiling may be. He figures to have more tough times ahead; the work of anticipating pitchers' adjustments and outfoxing them is never done. What he's already shown, though, is that his genius in handling a variety of looks and foiling the aims of many pitchers' favored offerings lends him a significant advantage and sets a very high floor for him. As the rest of the season unfolds, he could continue to emerge. This is a slider league. When Ortiz steps into the box, that's bad news for the guys with the sliders.