Stat of the Day and Ortiz vs. Delgado

One of our loyal readers, Eric, asked if David Ortiz's start this year looked similar to Carlos Delgado's last year. Both were sluggers were started off extremely slow but Carlos Delgado found himself again in an MVP-like manner. Let's look at both sluggers' Aprils and Mays.

Carlos Delgado's 2008:

Split          G GS  PA  AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO   BA  OBP  SLG   OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
April/March   26 25 111  96 14 19  3  0  3  12  0  0 13 20 .198 .297 .323  .620 31   0   1  0  1   4   0  .216    46    70
May           26 25 107  97 11 25  4  0  5  13  0  0  9 24 .258 .318 .454  .771 44   2   0  0  1   2   1  .290    78   108
June          28 27 117 105 14 24  6  1  6  20  1  0  9 21 .229 .308 .476  .784 50   3   3  0  0   1   0  .231    79   107
July          26 26 119  98 20 35  8  0  9  24  0  1 16 19 .357 .445 .714 1.160 70   4   2  0  3   4   0  .356   164   200
August        28 28 122 105 16 26  5  0  7  24  0  0 14 21 .248 .344 .495  .840 52   4   2  0  1   3   2  .244    93   119
Sept/Oct      25 25 110  97 21 33  6  0  8  22  0  0 11 19 .340 .400 .649 1.049 63   3   0  0  2   5   0  .347   139   174

And Big Papi's first two months of 2009:

Split          G GS  PA AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO   BA  OBP  SLG  OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+
April/March   22 22 100 87 10 20  7  1  0  12  0  1  8 22 .230 .290 .333 .623 29   1   1  0  4   0   1  .290   119    64
May           23 23 103 86  5 12  5  0  1   6  0  0 15 25 .140 .282 .233 .514 20   3   2  0  0   1   0  .183    81    40

While their Marchs and Aprils look similar, their Mays couldn't look more different. And even in the March/April, Delgado just seemed more unlucky (.216 BAbip to Big Papi's .290 BAbip) than anything else. And by May, Carlos Delgado already had shown signs of taking off while David Ortiz continues to struggle. Big Papi actually went down across the board from April to May.

So while Carlos Delgado has supposedly called David Ortiz to tell him not to worry about his start to this season, his 2008 doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what's been going on with Big Papi