Monday, April 20, 2009

David Ortiz is struggling

It has been a long time since I have posted, but this caught my eye so I figured I would post it. We all know about Ortiz's struggles so far in 2009 (wOBA of .206 and a K% of almost 30%), but his pitch f/x data paints an even bleaker picture.

Coming into today's game, Ortiz had swung and missed on 36 pitches so far this season. That puts him second in the majors behind Josh Hamilton's 43. Here is the top 5:

Hitter Misses
Josh Hamilton 43
David Ortiz 36
Adrian Gonzalez 34
Chris Davis 34
Jordan Schafer 32

When digging deeper, we can see fastballs are giving Ortiz problems. He is leading the majors in misses against fastballs with 19.

Hitter FB Misses Avg. FB Speed
David Ortiz 19 90.4
Jordan Schafer 18 91.9
Bengie Molina 18 93.6
Carl Crawford 17 89.7
Chris Davis 16 93.8
Adrian Gonzalez 15 91.1
Nelson Cruz 15 93.3
Emilio Bonifacio 14 91.0
Josh Hamilton 14 92.2
Pablo Sandoval 14 92.4


Also, the average fastball speed on his misses is only 90.4 mph. This would rank as 130th out of 152 hitters with at least 5 swings and misses.

To recap, not only is Ortiz swinging and missing often but he is also missing on fastballs with a low average velocity. Hopefully he can pick it up, or else the Sox will be looking to add a bat in the coming months.