On May 31st, 2009 David Ortiz was hitting .185/.284/.287 with one home run in 46 games. He’d struck out 48 times against 23 walks. He stopped brining his son to the Red Sox clubhouse. Things looked bleak. As April turned into May the question “was Big Papi done?” was on many minds.
But it didn’t last.
From the calendar change to June all the way through a few regular season games in October, Ortiz, hit .264/.356/.548 with 27 home runs. As a career .286/.380/.552 hitter this isn’t a tremendous decline. It’s a down year. 2009 was the first year Big Papi missed the All-Star Game since 2003 (for fun since it was in St.