It took a few hard weeks for Joey Ortiz to get accustomed to shortstop. His glove work wasn’t strong there over the first month of his sophomore season. Since then, though, it’s been very good, and that’s been enough to keep him in the lineup whenever he’s been healthy this year. The Brewers believe firmly in good defense and good baserunning—so much so that they’re willing to play a poor hitter, as long as they meet those standards and play a position where defense really matters. In Ortiz’s case, it certainly does.
Still, the rubber is close to meeting the road right now. Ortiz is batting .230/.242/.262 in September, after returning quickly from a hamstring strain. His bat speed is down, and his attack angle—a sign of whether he’s getting level with the incoming pitch on time or not—is down, even relative to his lowest-in-baseball standard. He’s unfortunately prone to hitting his best batted balls either on the ground or in the air to the opposite field, where they’re not as likely to carry out of the park. He has a fragile offensive profile, and right now, that profile is shattered on the ground. His lone extra-base hit this month was a ground-ball triple. His lone walk came almost three weeks ago, and was a four-pitch slopfest amid a miniature meltdown by Pirates hurler Carmen Mlodzinski. He’s not doing anything well at the plate right now, and there’s little sign that he’s going to improve soon.
On the other hand, Andruw Monasterio has remained admirably warm, despite being sent to the bench again when Ortiz returned from his injury. Monasterio has barely played this month—just as he barely played before mid-July—but overall, he’s batted .362/.397/.594 since August 1, in 73 plate appearances. He’s not that caliber of hitter, of course, but he’s a much more competent one than the current version of Ortiz. While he’s not as good a fielder as Ortiz, Monasterio has proved himself playable at short, too. At some point, the question becomes unavoidable: might the team elect to play the hot hand over the steadier glove, when the NLDS begins next week?
Milwaukee’s defensive phalanx is an indispensable part of their team identity. They’re unlikely to want to compromise it when the stakes are highest, especially with their pitching staff likely to be a bit diminished by injuries. To play Monasterio over Ortiz, they’d have to be confident that the former can play shortstop well enough to make the loss of the latter feel inconsequential. Monasterio has a better bat, and indeed, Ortiz has been almost an automatic out lately. The Crew can no more afford those extra outs on offense than they can afford to miss opportunities for outs on defense. Because they trust Ortiz’s glove so much more than Monasterio’s, though, the chance that they’ll go to their journeyman backup still feels remote. It will be interesting to watch each player over the final four games of the season, to whatever extent Monasterio gets into them and is allowed to demonstrate his offensive superiority to Ortiz. Both players will appear during the upcoming series, and clever substitutions might allow Pat Murphy to make the most of them without choosing one over the other. When writing out each day’s lineup card, though, he does have to choose.