MILWAUKEE -- The Joey Ortiz era began so well for the Brewers, who remain committed to the 27-year-old shortstop and confident he’ll hit enough to be an all-around contributor at the most important position on the infield.
Acquired by Milwaukee along with left-hander DL Hall in the Feb. 1, 2024, trade that sent Corbin Burnes to Baltimore, Ortiz thrived in his first few months with the Brewers. He finished April 2024 with a .385 on-base percentage. He followed that by winning the NL Rookie of the Month Award in May, becoming only the second Brewers player in the last 15 seasons so honored. By the All-Star break, Ortiz’s OPS still stood north of .800, all while covering the Brewers at third base because veteran Willy Adames was entrenched at shortstop. One especially enthusiastic teammate went so far as to call Ortiz “a generational player.”
But since then, he’s mostly been a struggling player -- at least at the plate. Since the ‘24 All-Star break, Ortiz’s .609 OPS ranks 228th of MLB’s 232 hitters with at least 500 plate appearances in that span. His 71 wRC+ -- a measure of offensive performance that accounts for ballpark factors -- ranks 224th. Last season, he tied for the highest popout percentage in the league, leading plainspoken Brewers manager Pat Murphy to quip at one point that Ortiz was trying to break the Major League record for foul outs to the first baseman.
The Brewers, however, still see upside.
And there are no indications they’re considering making a change.
“I mean, look, he’s still a young player with a ton of tools and a ton of ability and he’s shown flashes of being a really good offensive player,” president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said during the Winter Meetings. “Now it’s just about finding more consistency. I mean, you watch this guy in his early work and he’s as clean as anybody. It’s just a really good skillset, with power and the ability to go to all fields. That’s in there for this guy.”
Statcast offers insight about why Arnold and the Brewers feel that way. Ortiz’s issue, it appears, was tied to timing.
Last season, Ortiz had an attack angle of 2° -- one of the lowest in the game. Attack angle tells us what’s happening with the bat at the point of contact, measuring the vertical angle that the bat is moving as it impacts the ball. It’s a lot about timing, and getting the swing to move the right way at the right time. (If you visualize a swing, the barrel of the bat is angled down when it starts, and then it’s angled up when the ball is hit.)
For Oritz, what it says is that when he’s making contact, his bat is traveling flat, but he’s late. That aligns with the sort of contact he produced. His ground-ball rate (45.5%) was above league average, and his popup rate (13.4%) was tied for the highest in the league among qualified hitters. He wasn’t able to create loft with his swing.
Tied to timing is bat speed, which went from MLB’s 76th percentile in 2024 (73.4 mph) to 55th percentile in 2025 (72.4 mph), a significant drop-off. Meanwhile, his chase rate moved from 24.7% (75th percentile) to 33.3% (17th percentile). And while Ortiz’s swing rate (46.8%) is more or less in line with the league average, he was not swinging at strikes as much as he should: His zone swing rate was 57.8%, among the lowest for qualified hitters.
“Maybe it’s [about] simplifying some things,” Arnold said. “But I think Murph and the hitting guys do a really good job and I think they’ll have a good plan for him this year.”
Ortiz will have a long leash to execute that plan if he continues to play the field like he did in 2025, when the Brewers briefly considered playing Brice Turang at shortstop and Ortiz at second before Turang’s sore throwing shoulder promoted a last-minute change of plans. Ortiz responded by playing terrific shortstop defense, ranking fifth among shortstops in outs above average (13) and fifth in fielding run value (10).
“That's not something to just scoff at, like, ‘Oh, we need more offensive production.’ Guess what? He's going to give it to us,” Murphy said. “He's going to give us more. There's no question. The kid is very capable. He's going to be a really good offensive player.
“Obviously his confidence is a little bit shaken, and people talk about it a lot. So that's affecting him. But Joey is going to be way better. And he's a great defender. We can only hope that he can defend like that again.”