I would not exactly be breaking news to inform you that Joey Ortiz had a rough year in 2025. The infielder who was part of the return for superstar pitcher Corbin Burnes had an extremely promising rookie season in 2024, but to call the step back he took at the plate in 2025 \u201csignificant\u201d would probably be understating it. He was a disaster.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll get more into the details below, but for the purposes of this preview, we will simply point out that by having a brutal sophomore slump, Ortiz opened a door that seemed pretty tightly shut when the 2025 season started: a door to the possibility that if he doesn\u2019t improve at the plate, the Brewers might look for alternative options.<\/p>\n
Do the Brewers have any viable alternatives in 2026? That\u2019s arguable, and depends a little bit on how ready you think the 18-year-old with superstar potential (who\u2019s looked pretty darn good this spring) in the Brewer minor league system is. But that point is likely moot; even if merely for service time reasons, we are not going to see Jes\u00fas Made in the major leagues this season.<\/p>\n
But does that mean the Brewers won\u2019t explore other options if Ortiz looks as rough at the plate through the first two months as he did for most of last season? No, it certainly does not. Let\u2019s dig into it.<\/p>\n
As we sit here on March 11, I am comfortable saying that Ortiz (who is off playing for Mexico in the World Baseball Classic at the moment) will be the starting shortstop on Opening Day, and likely almost every day after that.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not difficult to see why. For roughly the first 120 years of organized baseball, shortstops were expected to do one thing: play defense. For every Ernie Banks or Vern Stephens who helped his team out offensively, there were 10 Juan Uribes or Rey Ordo\u00f1ezes. Some of the players in that mold \u2014 all defense, little-to-no offense \u2014 turned into superstars and even got into or near the Hall of Fame. Say hello to Ozzie Smith, Pee Wee Reese, Bert Campaneris, and Omar Vizquel.<\/p>\n
That model has changed somewhat since the 1990s, though. Teams finally realized that having a complete black hole in the lineup is not great, and that model of player is increasingly disappearing; it\u2019s difficult for anyone, at any position, to get reps in the lineup if they\u2019re a total zero on offense, no matter how good they are defensively. Look at the case of Andrelton Simmons, who for 11 years played some of the best defense that major league baseball has ever seen, but who was out of the league before he turned 33 because he could no longer hit at all. Simmons\u2019 career OPS+ of 87 is exactly the same as Ozzie Smith\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Simmons\u2019 career 87 OPS+ is also 21 points higher than Joey Ortiz\u2019s in 2025. It was a brutal offensive season. There were warning signs in the second half of 2024; Ortiz finished that season as essentially an exactly league-average hitter, but he hit just .211\/.283\/.362 after the All-Star break (bringing his OPS down from .817 in early July to .726 at the end of the season). That slide coincided nearly perfectly with a neck injury that landed him on the 10-day IL just before the break in early July, and while he seems to have recovered, there are some questions as to whether he adjusted his approach at the plate to relieve pain in his neck and somehow screwed himself up.<\/p>\n
Or maybe he just hasn\u2019t been able to adjust to the fact that the rest of the league has the book on him, now. Either way: 2025 was a horror show. Ortiz seemed to be not swinging at the good pitches to hit and swinging at the bad ones, a bizarre display of bad plate discipline \u2014 we usually just think of bad plate discipline as \u201cnot being able to not swing at pitches off the plate,\u201d but we don\u2019t always think of the flipside, the \u201cI need to be swinging at the pitches in the zone I can do damage on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result was that Ortiz was one of the very worst full-time hitters in baseball last year. On Statcast, he ranked in the bottom 3% of the league in all of xwOBA, xSLG, average exit velocity, and launch angle\/sweet-spot percentage. He was in the bottom 13% in barrel percentage and hard-hit percentage. His walk percentage dropped from 11% (good!) in 2024 to 5.3% (bad!) in 2025, likely because pitchers just were not afraid of the contact he\u2019d make. That plays out in another way: Ortiz remained very good at not swinging and missing in 2025, when he was in the top 15% of the league in whiff percentage and strikeout rate. But it does not matter if you hit the ball if you never hit the ball hard.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see if Ortiz can right the ship. His defense is good enough that if he gets anywhere close to league average offensively, he will be a clear net positive. Split the difference between 2024\u2019s 102 OPS+ and 2025\u2019s 66 OPS+, and you\u2019ve probably got a player with close to 3.0 WAR. His spring stats are encouraging, I suppose: he\u2019s only got one extra-base hit in six games (plus one more double in three games with Mexico), but he\u2019s hitting .412. The samples are too small and against pitchers who are barely trying to get him out, but he is hitting the ball a little harder this spring.<\/p>\n
While an Ortiz \u201crenaissance\u201d seems unlikely, I\u2019m optimistic that he can get at least part of the way back. I don\u2019t have a lot of data to back that up, except that his track record prior to last season has never suggested that he should be as bad as he was, and at least part of his struggles last year looked, to me at least, mental. Hopefully, the offseason has \u201ccleared the cookies,\u201d so to speak.<\/p>\n
If not? We might have to start seriously thinking about one of the names below.<\/p>\n
Who are the other options?<\/p>\n
In terms of major league options, the most likely guy to take the most reps at shortstop if Ortiz were to either get hurt or play himself out of a job would be someone I talked in depth about in the third base preview<\/a>, David Hamilton. Hamilton figures to be the team\u2019s utility guy, the backup at all of second base, third base, and shortstop, but finding his way into the starting lineup three or four times a week at various positions. He can certainly handle shortstop defensively. His offense would bring many of the same questions that Ortiz\u2019s does.<\/p>\n