Manager Terry Francona said that for David Ortiz to be successful, he can’t just sit against left-handers.
Ortiz hit a dismal .222 against lefties last season.
“For David to be successful — I see his numbers against lefties, I do — you can’t just sit him because I don’t know if he’d have as much success against righties,” Francona said. “I really believe that. I think there probably are times where it will do maybe him good and our team good to maybe give him a break against somebody he struggles with.”
Francona was asked by one reporter if there is something that can help Ortiz break the streak of starting slowly in April in terms of how he is treated in spring training.
“No, because he got a lot of at-bats last spring,” Francona said. “He wanted more. He always prepares pretty well. He’s really good about communicating with me in spring training about his at-bats. There will be games where I say, ‘You got enough’ and he goes ‘No, I need another one.’ … If I thought he needed more, I’d tell him.
“For whatever reason, the last two years have been horrendous starts,” Francona added. “And thankfully, he’s pulled out of it. There’s no getting around it — last April was awful. It was hard. You get through it, and we had to kind of fire our way through it at times, and thankfully we did. But it was hard. I lost a lot of sleep over that. I remember, we always tell guys the night before if they’re playing. It’s something that we do, and I’m real comfortable with it. I remember one night in New York, I think (CC) Sabathia might’ve been pitching (the next day), and that was one of the few times since I’ve been here, I had to go out and tell guys, ‘I don’t know. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Maybe in some places that’s normal, but it really bothered me. It was a lot of anxiety for an April game. It was important to them, so it should be important to me.”
