The five pitchers David Ortiz struggled with most in his career
A few days ago, a story popped up in my Facebook feed. Before clicking on it, I assumed it must have been a recent article, but it was from a year ago. Facebook is great/stupid like that. The article came was a Player’s Tribune piece by David Ortiz, on the five toughest pitchers he’s ever faced. In it, he breaks his list down by three great, retired pitchers (Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera and Mike Mussina), as well as two active pitchers (Sonny Gray and Carter Capps). It’s a good list from Ortiz, but I thought it would be fun to take a look at this statistically.
While Ortiz lists Capps, whom he faced just the one time, I thought it would be good to cut this off at a certain minimum plate appearances threshold for our purposes here. After all, through Saturday, Ortiz had faced 1,395 pitchers in his major league career. That’s, uh, a lot of pitchers. But he’s only faced 315 of them 10 or more times. Let’s look at the PA breakdown:
As you can see, the majority of pitchers, he only saw a handful of times – 77 percent of the pitchers he faced in his career, he didn’t see 10 times. That might seem odd, but given the number of pitchers a team needs to make it through today’s 162-game season, it really shouldn’t be. For instance, the Red Sox have used 25 pitchers this season, and 11 of them have thrown fewer than 30 innings for the team. And that is on the low side – the Braves have used 35 pitchers this year, and the Mariners have used 32.
While some of these pitchers that Ortiz didn’t face many times, such as Capps, have been incredibly difficult to face, I’ll give added consideration for more plate appearances. Throughout the piece, I’ll be using Basic wOBA as one of my deciding metrics. wOBA is a rate statistic that attempts to credit a hitter for the value of each outcome rather than treating all hits or times on base equally. Said more plainly, it’s an all-encompassing offensive statistic, and one of the main stats we use at FanGraphs. It is scaled similar to on-base percentage, so anything under .300 is pretty bad, anything around .350 is pretty good, and anything over .400 is excellent.
1. Bartolo Colon: 57 PA, .219 wOBA
Ortiz only faced seven pitchers more frequently in his career, and he was pretty good against all of them. He was pretty good against all the pitchers he faced very frequently, to be honest. Here are his basic wOBAs against the 15 pitchers he faced at least 50 times: .361, .405, .304, .324, .393, .401, .304, .319, .338, .419, .579, .424, .448, .432, .446. As you may have guessed, that .219 is against Colon. That’s actually pretty surprising, since Ortiz has a platoon advantage against Colon, and that Colon relies primarily on his fastball. Still, he managed to confound Ortiz.
2. Brian Matusz: 30 PA, .178 wOBA
Eyeballing the list of pitchers Ortiz faced at least 20 times, the majority of them are/were exclusively starting pitchers. There are some notable exceptions – Phil Coke (23 plate appearances), Brett Cecil (36) and Mariano Rivera (40) among them. There are also a couple who faced him in multiple roles, like Matusz and Kelvim Escobar. Coke got consideration here, as he held Ortiz to a .124 wOBA in 23 PA, but one of Ortiz’s two hits off of Coke was a walk-off double.
Matusz faced Ortiz both as a starter and a reliever in his career, and held him in check in both roles. Of the 62 players who Ortiz faced at least 30 times, Matusz was the only one to hold Ortiz to a sub-.200 wOBA. Ortiz hit .138/.167/.241 off of him – just four hits in 30 plate appearances. He walked just once against 13 strikeouts. At least three of the four hits were doubles?
3. Rafael Betancourt: 12 PA, .000 wOBA
There are a few pitchers who came away from their encounters with Ortiz with a clean sheet — .000/.000/.000, or a .000 wOBA. Cole Hamels (in 6 PA), Luis Ayala (8 PA), and current teammates Drew Pomeranz and Koji Uehara (7 PA each) are among them. But Betancourt tops the list in terms of PA against, with 12, and is the only pitcher Ortiz faced 10 or more times to blank him. Like Colon, Betancourt is another pitcher who threw almost exclusively fastballs. Ortiz did manage one sac fly against him, at least.
4. Cliff Lee, 33 PA: .217 wOBA
This spot could go to Randy Johnson, who held him to an almost identical wOBA (.216), but in five fewer PAs. I went with Lee because he tormented Ortiz for a longer stretch of time. Johnson’s PAs were clumped in 2005 and 2006. But Ortiz notched at least three PA against Lee every year from 2004-2010, and then in 2012 and 2013. Ortiz must have been happy to miss him in 2011. In 2005, Ortiz managed to go 3-for-6 against Lee, and then from 2006 on he went 3-for-24, with one walk and six strikeouts. He retired Ortiz in each of their final 10 matchups. That’s total domination.
5. Jose Quintana, 18 PA: .208 wOBA
As Ortiz went with someone from the current crop of pitchers, so will I. His choice, Gray was an excellent one, but he’s faced Quintana more often, and with nearly the same dismal results. Quintana struck out Ortiz more times (five) than Ortiz reached base against him (four). Among current starting pitchers that Ortiz faced at least 10 times, the only pitcher who kept Ortiz to a lower OPS was Zack Greinke, but Ortiz only faced Greinke in one game since 2010, so Quintana seemed like a more fitting choice.
So, what about the choices that Ortiz did make? Well, he only faced Capps the one time, and there’s no denying what Ortiz wrote. Capps’ delivery is technically illegal, and the fact that he’s allowed to use it makes him devastating. It’s hard to argue against him. Gray, as mentioned before, has been tough on Ortiz. Gray held him to a .156 wOBA in eight PAs. Ortiz managed a solitary double in those 8 tries. And the double came this season, after Ortiz had written the article and after Gray – who had a down year – started struggling. At the time he wrote the piece, he was 0-for-6 against Gray, with two strikeouts.
The legends he chose are a bit of a different story. These seem chosen more out of his specific reverence for each pitcher. Recognizing Pedro Martinez was obvious, and of the three he did the worst against Martinez. He posted just a .256 wOBA against him in 18 PAs. He reached against Martinez the same four times in 18 tries he did against Quintana, with the difference being that Ortiz actually homered off of Martinez. It was the biggest play of that game, back in 2002.
Against Mussina, he was even better – a .324 wOBA in 83 PA. He only faced three pitchers more frequently – Roy Halladay, Mark Buehrle and CC Sabathia. He actually fared worse against Sabathia (.304 wOBA). That’s slightly misleading though. As Ortiz referenced in his piece, in Mussina’s prime, he owned Ortiz. From 1998-2003, Ortiz went 1-for-26 against Mussina, with four walks and 16 strikeouts (postseason included). If we cut it off right there, Mussina certainly goes down as one of Ortiz’s five greatest tormenters. But between the combination of Ortiz figuring Mussina out and Mussina being on the downslope, the next five years would be a lot rosier, as from 2004-2008, Ortiz went 17-for-48, with five walks against 11 strikeouts.
He was even better than that against Rivera. For his career, including the postseason, Ortiz hit .342/.375/.500 off of Rivera. He had three doubles and a homer off of Rivera, so it wasn’t all just bloopers. It’s likely that Ortiz was being deferential to a former great competitor, but on the whole, Ortiz did pretty damn well against Rivera. Literally no other player had more hits against Rivera than did Ortiz. He had 13 hits against Rivera, and only three others (Jason Varitek, 12; Edgar Martinez, 11; Manny Ramirez, 11) got to double digits.
Just for fun, let’s look at the inverse. Who are the five pitchers Ortiz did the best against? We’ll use the same 10 PA minimum.
1. Seth McClung: 13 PA, .831 wOBA
His all-time best wOBA, he reached base in nine of his 13 PA – four homers, four walks and an intentional walk. That’s ridiculous, even for such a small sample.
2. Kevin Brown: 11 PA, .686 wOBA
Another tiny sample, Ortiz reached base in eight of his 11 PA against Brown, who is one of the most underrated pitchers in baseball history. Four of his six hits against him went for extra bases.
3. Felix Hernandez: 49 PA, .467 wOBA
Ortiz faced Hernandez every season from 2006-2015, and he reached base against him in every year except 2010. There are a couple of other impressive pitchers who Ortiz did better against (Kevin Gausman and Max Scherzer, specifically) but Hernandez has been the most consistently good for the longest time period, and Ortiz always fared well against him.
4. Roy Halladay: 109 PA, .361 wOBA
When you can say that the guy you homered off of the most in your career was a Hall-of-Fame-level talent, you know you had a damn good career. Ortiz hit six homers off of Halladay in their matchups. No other hitter homered off of Halladay more than four times.
5. Mark Buehrle: 96 PA, .405 wOBA
The guy Ortiz faced the second-most frequently in his career, Ortiz had his most extra-base hits (16) against Buehrle, who like Jamie Moyer (.605 wOBA against) was a crafty lefty who was not quite crafty enough to defeat Ortiz as often as he needed to. From 2000-2015, Ortiz faced Buehrle in every year but one (2009), and he reached base against him at least one time in every single one of those years.
Hat tip to the always awesome Baseball-Reference.com, without which not much of this research would have been possible.
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