Now, that lone skill appears to be gone. It would make sense, given that Ortiz is now 33, that he might generally start to drop off a cliff, and it would also make sense for that process to be rather sudden and ungraceful given that his one unique gift - his wrists - was operated on last season.

I apologize for the rough math, but I'm not trying to disprove Einstein's Relativity Theory here. However, if you look at Ortiz's numbers from the start of 2007 through his injury last year compared to the numbers since, you see an unsurprising trend. He may still have a good eye, but his walks have crept down a bit (from 15.9% to 14.5%) while the strikeouts have gone up (18.4% to 19.9%).

I'm obviously no expert, but that looks to me like a hitter who is both losing his ability to dominate inside pitches (and perhaps striking out on them more) and struggling to figure out how to compensate for it given his newly altered (both surgically and chronologically) wrists.

I think part of that struggle is Ortiz pressing because everyone still expects him to be that 40-home run guy, when really he could be just as useful if he was only the 23-home run guy they wound up with last season.

I don't know yet if Ortiz is doomed. He may still come around, even if only to the tune of 15 or so homers, which would still make him a useful hitter for the Red Sox - just not one who will be around for much longer.

Article Author: Geeves

Geeves is mainly a critic of the sports and entertainment arena, recently shifting his time and resources away from his own middling blogs and into the Blogcritics realm at something resembling full time.

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