David Ortiz Can Draw Motivation From Buster Olney's Latest Story
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- David Ortiz has not even arrived at the Red Sox' complex in Fort Myers and probably won't show up for another week or two. But if the 40-year-old needs to find some fire to get his final big league season started the right way, he's already got some kindling waiting for him in the form of Buster Olney's latest story on ESPN.com.
Olney wrote a 1,300-word (Insider only) story which stated the Red Sox should be prepared for a bad season from Ortiz, so as not to be forced to deal with an uncomfortable and ultimately a losing situation similar to what the Yankees experienced in Derek Jeter's final season.
To be clear, nothing Olney wrote was wrong or illogical. But that's never stopped David Ortiz from losing his mind in the past. The disrespect card is part of what has made him such a great player for so long.
In particular, Ortiz is not going to like this part of Olney's story:
"But the Red Sox cannot lose sight of the fact that for the first three months of last season, Ortiz struggled. On the morning of July 2, he was hitting .228, with a .313 on-base percentage and just 13 homers. In other words, he seemed like an older player in decline.
"While the Red Sox hope for and anticipate one last great season from Ortiz, they should endeavor to avoid the mistakes the Yankees made with Derek Jeter before and during Jeter's final season in 2014. The Red Sox should at least prepare for the possibility that a great star could struggle as he prepares for the final goodbye of his career."
That last line just might end up printed out in 72-point font in Ortiz's locker this spring.
Ortiz also won't appreciate this excerpt:
"If Ortiz's performance in 2016 declines markedly -- in keeping with the history of just about every other age-40 player, from Honus Wagner to Jeter -- then the offseason meeting would at least put the staff in a better position to deal with needed adjustments during the season.
"What the Red Sox don't want -- what they cannot have, really -- is a situation that played out for the Yankees and Jeter, in which Ortiz is struggling in August and September and the team continues to handle him like he's still a high-end player, out of concern for embarrassing him."
That's just not going to have a soft landing on David Ortiz's consciousness.
Again, Olney's story is fair, as he recalls the Jeter trainwreck in 2014, when the all-time great Yankee batted .256 with a .617 OPS yet was still penciled into the lineup in the No. 2 hole in 141 of his 144 starts. In the other three games, he batted leadoff. When manager Joe Girardi kept putting Jeter in the two spot, it was essentially a lifetime achievement award. And it probably cost the Yankees a trip to the playoffs. (They finished four games out of a wild card.)
While Olney's suggestion is fair, it might be unnecessary. For one, the Jeter comparison is a bit off, considering Jeter's penultimate season was wrecked by injuries that limited him to just 17 games in which he hit hit below .200. Ortiz, on the other hand, hit .273 with 37 homers last year.
But aside from that, Ortiz has certainly played through some rough patches in his career, and eventually, he ended up getting dropped in the lineup. And that happened just last season; Ortiz was dropped to fifth last May. When the drop didn't work, manager John Farrell gave Ortiz a few days on the bench.
Granted, Farrell and Ortiz weren't facing the pressure of "The Farewell Tour." But the manager proved capable of acting, and Ortiz proved capable of positively reacting (at least publicly).
Relatively speaking, it was a pretty big deal, and it led to a cacophony of voices questioning for the umpteenth time whether Ortiz might finally be done.
He'd go on to hit .298 with 31 homers, 29 doubles and a 1.016 OPS in the 103 games that followed.
Based on his history, it'd be hard to say that the slump in May -- and the public doubt that came with hit -- didn't have something to do with that resurgence.
Look back just to 2013, when Ortiz put forth one of the most ridiculous World Series performances of all time. After hitting .688 with a .760 OBP and 1.948 OPS (not a typo) against St. Louis, and after winning his third title and first World Series MVP, Ortiz spoke into the microphone in the Fenway Park media room and asked loudly, "Where is Dan Shaughnessy?!"
The Boston Globe columnist had written a story a few months earlier, when Ortiz was playing much better than he had been playing the year before, in which he peppered Ortiz with some tough questions about steroids. Ortiz didn't care for the suspicions at the time of the questions, and five months later after arguably the greatest achievement of his professional career, Ortiz was still mad about it.
That's kind of who he is.
As a result, he opens himself up to some criticism in the media and on sports talk radio and the like. Whether he feels a given contract which pays him millions of dollars to hit a baseball is "humiliating" and "embarrassing," or whether he feels like Boston is turning into a hole of excrement that isn't fun, or if he's waging war with David Price over perceived disrespect, or even if he takes a league-wide rule change as a personal attack on his way of life, there always seems to be something gnawing away at Ortiz's happiness. And people are always willing to comment on his state of mind.
"A lot of them on those radio shows, they like to come out with their chest wide out and before you do that you need to know who you're going to talk about," Ortiz said two years ago, fittingly in a Shaughnessy column. "Haters, man, haters. People hate. That's the world that we live in today. People hate. They are not comfortable that you are doing well. That's it. That's the way I see it. Because I do not disrespect no one since I've been here. I just go about my business, do what I got to do, win championships. That's what every single person that is a fan of any organization wants from a player. That's what I do. That part of it motivates me. Come in and kick [expletive]. I can't wait for the season to start. I'm hungrier than ever. ... Prove people wrong my whole career."
Well, even though Olney didn't really cross any lines or suggest anything wrong, Ortiz was just gift-wrapped another "hater" to help him start the 2016 season. When you've put together a remarkable career, one that warrants serious Hall of Fame consideration, and when you're embarking on a "farewell tour" of gifts and praise, it's hard to find the "haters." But finding one -- more so than a meeting with John Henry, Dave Dombrowksi and John Farrell -- is probably what's most important to Ortiz this spring.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.