Here's a new way to look at the career (so far) of David Ortiz to see just how high he has flown and how far he has fallen.

This graph shows a rolling total of Ortiz's home runs over his career. At each point, it's a total of his previous 162 games. The graph ends through his performance yesterday, which (for example) sums up his 70 games from this year with the last 92 games he played in 2008.

Click on the image for a larger version

To help you orient, I've also added the years covered by each career game number. Since Ortiz was a part time player for his first several years with the Twins, those years are compressed at the beginning.

For starters, focus just on the red line. This is his total number of HR in his last 162 games. We see that he reached a peak value of 63 in his 1002nd career game, coming at the end of 2006.  For bits of 2004, most of 2006, and some of 2007, Ortiz was over 50 HR in his last 162 games. However, 2007 saw a significant decline in his power output, as his rolling total started to steadily drop until leveling in the high 30s. Once again, though, at the start of 2009, his total fell off again as he went through his long homerless drought. The low point in 2006 has been 26 homers.

The blue line is a little bit more accurate, in that it normalizes his HR output by plate appearances. He did a fair amount of pinch-hitting early in his career, and thus his opportunities per game to hit HRs were fewer. The blue line ranks his plate appearances per home run over his last 162 games. In other words, it's an average of how many plate appearances he had betwen home runs, and therefore a small number means hitting more home runs.

We see that in the last few weeks, the lines have turned around and started heading back in the right directions. His 162-game HR total is now 29 which, while up from his recent low of 26, is still way off his typical numbers since he's been with the Red Sox.

My guess is that Ortiz will never pass 40 homers again over a 162-game span. That doesn't mean he can't be productive. I also ran the numbers for Ortiz's RBI over his career and while this number is also down, it's not down nearly as much as his HR. He hit a peak of 170 (wow!) RBI, also in his 1002nd career game, and his total is 116 now. The fact of the matter is that if he can put together a few more 30 HR, 110 RBI seasons, he'll still be a very valuable player. He just won't be the monster we saw in 2004-2006.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am and is filed under Game Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.