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Big Papi Walk-off Stats

Frayed Knot Aug 02 2006 04:26 PM

None of this is my research (so I'm not going to vouch for its total accuracy) but it is gleaned from reputable sources so I believe it to be legit. Papi Ortiz 2006 ABs in possible Walk-off situations (9th inning or later tying or winning run) Date Need to Win Result Pitcher 6/11 HR HR Otsuka 6/24 2B HR Gordon 6/26 HR 4-1 Cormier 6/26 1B IBB Gordon 6/29 1B 1B Condrey 7/29 1B IBB F.Rodriguez 7/29 1B 1B Romero 7/31 HR HR Carmona That's 8 Walk-off opportunities where there were 2 Int Walks and 5 of the other 6 were won by hits, 3 of those by HRs, including 2 that could only have been won by HRs. The last one on the list (Sunday night) was a 3R HR w/1 out in the 9th and a 2-run deficit. And the "streak" goes back further. Since the end of the 2004 regular season, Ortiz has come to the plate in a walk-off situations 19 times. - He's reached base 16 times. - In those 16 he's 11-for-14 (.786), with 7 HR and 20 RBI. In 2005 and 2006, he is 8-for-9, with 5 HR and 15 RBI He also now has 11 Walk-off HRs in his career, trailing only a pack of guys at 12, but check out the career HRs & ABs in comparison: 12 Walks-offs: Jimmie Foxx; ABs = 8,134; HRs = 458 Mickey Mantle; 8,102; 536 Stan Musial; 10,972; 475 F. Robinson; 10,006; 586 Babe Ruth; 8,398; 714 11 Walk-offs: Tony Perez; 9,778; 379 David Ortiz; 3,508; 215 10 Walk-offs: Dick Allen; 6,332; 351 Harold Baines; 9,908; 438 Reggie Jackson; 9,864; 563 Mike Schmidt; 8,352; 548 Only Dick Allen has less than twice the number of ABs, and only he and Tony Perez have fewer than twice the number of HRs. THAT is one helluva roll folks!

metirish Aug 02 2006 04:30 PM

Makes you wish the Mets had taken a chance on him when it seemed no one wanted the guy,Ortiz is an easy guy to like.

Elster88 Aug 02 2006 04:47 PM

[url=http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060802]Bird vs. Ortiz[/url]

Zvon Aug 02 2006 05:29 PM

Big Papi's clutch run is truly incredible. Almost seems like he does it once a week, and indication of how when he does do it it reverberates for quite some time.

Frayed Knot Aug 02 2006 10:46 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Aug 02 2006 11:34 PM

Tonight in Boston, Sox trail the whole game against Cleveland until the 9th when they put a couple on and get a game-winning, walk-off HR from .... Mark Loretta on edit: it was a walk-off 2B from (sweet) Loretta, I mis-heard earlier.

smg58 Aug 02 2006 11:12 PM

The Twins will never live down non-tendering him. Think about it: they had full control of him, but decided he wasn't worth offering a contract to. The Pierzynski trade for Nathan/Liriano/Bosner might not even cancel that one out.

Frayed Knot Aug 02 2006 11:28 PM

The Twins apparently thought he should be more of an opposite field, slap-hitter (acc to an SI article) and were weary of waiting for progress. And besides ... they had Doug Meintkiewicz!!! There was a similar list recently (NY Times I think?) showing all the [u:8df52d66f1]now[/u:8df52d66f1] All-Star pitchers who were released, traded, waived, or somehow given up on prior to turning 24. Off the top of my head: Willis, Liriano, Pedro, Bonderman, Kazmir, Arroyo, J Santana ... plus there were about 6 or 7 others. It all looks so easy with hindsight.

Zvon Aug 02 2006 11:32 PM

Frayed Knot wrote: The Twins apparently thought he should be more of an opposite field, slap-hitter (acc to an SI article) and were weary of waiting for progress. And besides ... they had Doug Meintkiewicz!!! There was a similar list recently (NY Times I think?) showing all the now All-Star pitchers who were released, traded, waived, or somehow given up on prior to turning 24. Off the top of my head: Willis, Liriano, Pedro, Bonderman, Kazmir, Arroyo, J Santana ... plus there were about 6 or 7 others. It all looks so easy with hindsight. Hopefully Oliver Perez makes that list someday

Edgy DC Aug 02 2006 11:58 PM

He was available to everybody. The Twins will get past it just like all organizations get past their mistakes. The question is: sooner or later? What blows my mind is how this guy reflects on Bill James and Ugueth Urbina. The Red Sox were mocked for listeneing to that Bill James guy when they divested themselves of Urbina and their bullpen struggled. The team was derided for the "Closer by Committee" strategy, when in fact James thought and thinks that a closer is a good thing to have. (Indeed, that bullpen roles in gerneral are good things to have.) He just thought Urbina wasn't such a good one for the money he cost him. So he took this abuse, and the team struggled to rebuild their bullpen midseason (and more or less succeeded). But, if you believe his biographer Scott Gray, the money they saved on not re-signing Oogie went toward Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, David Ortiz, and Mark Bellhorn. That's kind of sketchy as Bellhorn didn't show up until 2004, but Wow.

Edgy DC Aug 03 2006 09:09 AM

Another thing about Big Papi is that there was internal disagreement among the Sox brass about him --- conventional wisdom being that Fenway contains lefthanded power hitters. Turns out that he not only has the pulling power to overcome the deep right field, but what should be his routine flies to the opposite field carry enough to clear the green monster. Now, in retrospect, it's hard to beleive anybody doubted that Fenway would keep him from flourishing, because he's such a carbon copy of young Mo vaughn, but before 1995, it was also believed that Fenway was keeping Mo from clearing 30 homers.

seawolf17 Aug 03 2006 09:28 AM

="Edgy DC"]Another thing about Big Papi is that there was internal disagreement among the Sox brass about him --- conventional wisdom being that Fenway contains lefthanded power hitters. Turns out that he not only has the pulling power to overcome the deep right field, but what should be his routine flies to the opposite field carry enough to clear the green monster. Now, in retrospect, it's hard to beleive anybody doubted that Fenway would keep him from flourishing, because he's such a carbon copy of young Mo vaughn, but before 1995, it was also believed that Fenway was keeping Mo from clearing 30 homers. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this didn't help either.

Frayed Knot Aug 03 2006 09:39 AM

I found that NYTimes list I was talking about earlier. It's a list of pitchers from this year's All-Star team, plus a handful of other active notables, who were traded and/or waived by teams before they were 27 y/o (about the same age as when Papi was non-tendered by the Twins). B Arroyo, C Capuano, T Hoffman (twice), B Jenks, S Kazmir, F Liriano, B Penny (twice), BJ Ryan, J Santana (twice), J Schmidt, D Turnbow (twice), J Bonderman, A Harang (twice), R Johnson, C Schilling (3 times), J Smoltz, D Willis, Chris Young (3 times), plus our own Petey Martinez Quite a list.

Edgy DC Aug 03 2006 10:02 AM

Some of those guys (Penny, for instance) were dealt in high-profile deals for other all-star-quality players, though. The question is which ones were moved as throw-ins or waived or non-tendered. It's hard to argue with much accuracty how Mo's body mass affected him (at least his bat) in his twenties, and it remains to be seen whether Papi's will catch up with him in his thirties, a la Mo. But it probably will --- when he's a Met.

Vic Sage Aug 03 2006 11:33 AM

i remember clearly, during the 02-03 season, advocating for the Mets to sign Ortiz. We needed a LHed bat off the bench, and one that could fill in at 1B for the injured Mo Vaughn, perhaps to platoon with Jason Phillips. We ended up signing Tony Clark, who wasn't bad actually, but i was disappointed when Ortiz ended up with the Sox. I'm not pretending that i foresaw him becoming an MVP-type player, but he was a guy with obvious upside, and i just couldn't understand why (1) the Twins would just let him walk away, and (2) why we did, too, in favor of a faded hitter with bad knees.

MFS62 Aug 03 2006 11:40 AM

I recall that one Supreme Couty Judge said about pornography, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". We've had several discussions here about "clutch hitter". Some have come up with a number of different statistical definitions. Some have said it doesn't exist. As for me, I might not be able to come up with a definition, but the numbers FK posted will make me think of that term when I look at Big Papi. Later

Rotblatt Aug 03 2006 01:20 PM

Vic Sage wrote: i remember clearly, during the 02-03 season, advocating for the Mets to sign Ortiz. We needed a LHed bat off the bench, and one that could fill in at 1B for the injured Mo Vaughn, perhaps to platoon with Jason Phillips. We ended up signing Tony Clark, who wasn't bad actually, but i was disappointed when Ortiz ended up with the Sox. I'm not pretending that i foresaw him becoming an MVP-type player, but he was a guy with obvious upside, and i just couldn't understand why (1) the Twins would just let him walk away, and (2) why we did, too, in favor of a faded hitter with bad knees. Yeah, it boggles the mind that so many teams passed on Ortiz when he was let go. I mean, even looking just at his MN numbers, the dude practically screams left-handed power off the bench. And who DIDN'T need a left-handed power bat off the bench? I have to wonder, though, isn't his success with the Sox more a vindication of good scouting (some dude who thought Ortiz might improve if he stopped trying to go the other way) than the egghead SABREmetrics for which Boston is known? Especially given that the Boston eggheads thought Jeremy Giambi, signed at the same time, was going to be the real deal? Man, that concept would just blow all the crappy sportswriter's minds.

MFS62 Aug 03 2006 01:35 PM

Here are his numbers. http://www.baseball-reference.com/o/ortizda01.shtml You can't really tell from his defensive stats, but he had the reputation as a goshawful fielder. So that's probably why the NL teams passed on him. But he was making under $1 million per year, so I can't imagine why a small market team such as Kansas City didn't try to sign him. He immediately filled the "Vic Wertz - Big Fat First Baseman Who Can Hit" memorial roster spot for Boston, later held by Mo Vaughn. Later

Edgy DC Aug 03 2006 01:46 PM

His intitial contract with Boston was for $1,250,000. And there were probably more established lefthanded bench hitters that could be had for that, so it wasn't just looking at the stats, your scouts had to do their work also.

Frayed Knot Aug 03 2006 02:21 PM

]We've had several discussions here about "clutch hitter". Some have come up with a number of different statistical definitions. Some have said it doesn't exist. As for me, I might not be able to come up with a definition, but the numbers FK posted will make me think of that term when I look at Big Papi. Of course no one really denies that clutch hitting exists. With nearly 2,500 games/yr there are tons of opportunities for clutch hits, clutch outs, clutch weeks, clutch months, and even clutch seasons. The main argument the "anti-clutch" camp makes is that past performance in some narrowly defined situation simply makes for a bad predictor of future performance in them and that "clutch" is not an ability that a player carries with him as if a genenic trait. It's not a settled issue, but it's an argument gets mis-stated by many (just recently by Keith on TV) and often intentionally so. So even with all the amazing-ness of those Papi stats, they're still just comprised of a sample size of less than 20 ABs spread over nearly 2 years and I don't think say much other than that he's on one hell of a roll is a set of very speicalized situations. Indeed, at least one of the guys at SoSH who dug up this stuff did so saying that he expected to find the truth to be LESS/u] amazing than what his/their minds remembered about Papi's recent past, so even the everyday observers were surprised at how stunning a run it's been.

Johnny Dickshot Aug 03 2006 02:26 PM

I like the way Ortiz spits on those giant paws of his and exaggeratedly claps them together once -- then rubs, as he approaches the plate.

Edgy DC Aug 03 2006 02:31 PM

He learned that from Miyagi.

MFS62 Aug 03 2006 02:33 PM

That's MISTER Miyagi to you. Later

Frayed Knot Aug 03 2006 02:36 PM

btw, the Loretta walk-off hit that won the game last night was fun. The Injuns are using this guy (Cremora?) to close since they sent Wickman away. He was the one who served up the Ortiz tater on Sunday (97 mph fastball). Anyway, last night he got the first two outs, then went: HBP, HBP, BB, and finally the winning Loretta 2B. The fun part is that MFY fans are on the radio complaining that Cleveland "isn't trying hard enough" and it suxx how Boston is winning these games against sub-par talent. The Yanx don't play against those kinds of teams I guess.