David Ortiz: No Homers in 102 At Bats

The days of the Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz combo in middle of the batting order are over in Boston. Ortiz has not been near the hitter he was since Manny left.

The first month of the season is over and Ortiz still hasn’t homered this season after 27 games and 102 at bats. The 33 year old Ortiz is hitting .225 this season and is slugging only .333, tenth on the Red Sox roster.

It is huge drop from his four straight seasons of slugging over .600 from 2004-2007.

He is one of eight Red Sox players not to hit a home run this season, however, none of those other seven players have batted more than 21 times this season. His 14 runs batted in are 43rd in the AL and 20 behind league leader Evan Longoria who has 34.

Most surprising of all Ortiz is 10th on the team in OPS with a .664 mark. He used to have a slugging percentage near this number.

Ortiz may snap out of this slump any day but the longer it goes the more concern there will be that his best days may be over.

He has been known to get hot in the past after a slump, so it will be interesting to watch his progress or lack of progress as the season goes on.

The main question is how long manager Terry Francona and the Red Sox will keep him in the lineup. The Red Sox owe a lot to Ortiz who brought them back from the brink of elimination in the 2004 playoffs to beat the Yankees after trailing three games to none and defeating the Cardinals in the World Series to win their first championship in 86 years.

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Kosuke Fukudome is scratching his head wondering why he could be so hot in April and so cold in May.

Kosuke Fukudome Struggling In May

Kosuke Fukudome was hitting .371 on April 26, but since then he is one for 18 and his average has plummeted to .300. He had an excellent start to the season hitting four homers and driving in 15 runs in April.

Fukudome also had a great start last season hitting .305 but only had one homer and 10 RBI’s at the end of April despite having 105 at bats. He had 34 fewer at bats at the end of April but still had much better statistics this season.

Cubs fans can only hope this will be a short slump and not the kind of slump he experienced last season. Last season his average dropped every month as the season went on and his slump carried over into the postseason when he had one hit in ten at bats.