Baseball Musings: Second Century

June 29, 2006

Second Century

David Ortiz reached the 200 home run mark with a solo shot to center field in the 8th inning to put the Red Sox up 4-2. He's hit 142 in three and a half years with the Red Sox. He never hit more than 20 in a season with the Twins. It's just amazing that team didn't realize what it had in Ortiz.

Update: Papelbon comes on and picks up his 24th save of the season. As I watched him pitch to Julio Franco, I wondered if Jon was born after Julio premiered. Not so, but in checking the database, there have been 122 players this year in the majors who were born after 4/23/1982, the day Franco came up with the Phillies. Felix Hernandez remains the youngest player in the majors, born 4/8/1986, nearly four years after Julio came into the NL.

Posted by David Pinto at 09:47 PM | Sluggers | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Looks as though Superman was playing Centerfield for the Sox tonight. What a catch!

Posted by: Steve M at June 29, 2006 10:13 PM

Ortiz's increased power is not as significant as the 20 HR difference would indicate. His high PA for Minn was 472 as a 24 year old. His 20 HR season was 458 PA as a 26 year old. As a comparison, he had 704 PA for Bos last year as a 29 year old.

His AB/HR (with age)

21 49.0
22 30.9
23 20.0
24 41.5
25 16.8
26 20.6
27 14.5
28 14.2
29 12.8
30 12.9

Looks like a fairly typical power growth to me. It just looks so dramatic as a counting stat because the Twins were too stubborn to give him playing time.

Posted by: Craig A. Damon at June 29, 2006 11:20 PM

also, he was hurt a lot when he was with the twins.

Posted by: amos at June 30, 2006 12:18 AM

Hi Craig. Thanks for posting the AB/HR #'s. They're certainly more useful than raw HR #'s! I think your argument would look stronger if you dropped ages 21 & 23 (which had very low AB #'s and probably weren't representative of his abilities at the time). Now there are four clear tiers, which appear to show a natural progression:

22 30.9
24 41.5

25 16.8
26 20.6

27 14.5
28 14.2

29 12.8
30 12.9

'course, it's always easier to see these things in hind-sight. And, Ortiz' overall hitting statistics didn't appear to be gradually improving. Here are his OPS #'s (for seasons w/ 100+ PA):

22 .817
24 .810
25 .799
26 .836
27 .961
28 .983
29 1.001

Something clearly happened between ages 26 & 27! :)

Posted by: Jason at June 30, 2006 10:59 AM

something CLEARly did happen. he really started CREAMing the ball right about then. ;-)

Posted by: BenJah at June 30, 2006 01:28 PM

I'm about a week and a half older than King Felix....that's a first for me

Posted by: Marc Normandin at June 30, 2006 03:53 PM

Something did happen. If you read the SI interview with Ortiz, he relates that the Twins were obsessed with moving runners over instead of driving the ball. He would get high fives for grounding out to second, but not for driving the ball somewhere with a runner on 2nd.

After his new Boston teammates started calling him "Juan Pierre" after hitting only 4 HR's through May 2003 and his manager chastised him for grounding out to 2nd to pusha runner to 3rd instead of trying to drive the ball and "bring him home", David changed his approach from what had been ingrained in him by the Twins his whole professional career. Voila! Big Papi is born.

The Twins wonder why the struggle to score runs every year. Maybe it's this fetish with making outs they seem to have.

Posted by: Paul at June 30, 2006 04:59 PM

i believe ortiz said something to one of the twins coaches to the effect of, "fine. you want me to hit like a little bitch, i'll hit like a little bitch!"

Posted by: amos at June 30, 2006 07:47 PM