Chatted for a few minutes yesterday with Detroit Tigers outfielder Jacque Jones. Jones, who had the distinction of sharing a room with David Ortiz when both players were growing up and cutting their baseball teeth in the Minnesota Twins organization, actually had dinner with David Ortiz Wednesday night, so he might have one of the best people to ask about Big Papi’s spirits amidst an epic hitting struggle that has saddled him with a .083 batting average thus far.

One encouraging sign that I saw from Ortiz last night: he worked a pair of walks in his last two at bats and wasn’t flailing away at pitches out of the strike zone when it was clear the Tigers pitchers wanted him to chase.

That usually is a sign that Ortiz is snapping out of his “trying to do too much at the plate” funk and is ready to start pounding pitches. Papi still leads the team with nine walks, and the tasty pitches he’s seen this year have been few and far between.



Here’s what Jones had to say:

JJ: “We were roommates in the minor leagues and we were real cool up with the Twins and ever since he’s come [to Boston.] In fact, we had dinner [Wednesday night].”

How were his spirits at dinner?
JJ: “Man, people are idiots if they think he’s going to hit .100 all season. What are we talking about, 30 or 35 at bats? In the grand scheme of things you’re going to have bad stretches every season and you’re going to have bad stretches next year – and every season after that. The key thing with him is that he knows that he’s still going to be in there and it’s only a matter of time before he does something about it. He knows that he’s still dangerous.

It’s not a matter of if, but it’s a matter of when."

I guess people have questioned the start given that he’s coming off knee surgery, and wondering if that’s really affecting him.
JJ: "Man, he hit last year with a [expletive] knee. What do you think he’ going to do on a good knee? We go through things like this all the time and people start asking questions: “Is he slowing down?” He can still hit and things just aren’t falling in for him. The difference for him is that he’s going to get 8, 9 or 10 hits and then nobody is going to be able to question it. It’s just a matter of when he’s going to get hot. He’s going to be fine. He was fine. I’m looking at him [at dinner] like he must at .250 or .240 or something like that. He was fine.”