Magglio Ordonez is 35 years old. He's two years older than David Ortiz, 1½ years older than Derrek Lee.
With his hair cut short, he looks younger than he did two years ago. When he steps into the batter's box, he looks five years older.
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| Magglio Ordonez, who had 21 homers and 103 RBI last year, has hit just four bombs and driven in 28 in 2009. (US Presswire) |
They say he doesn't drive the ball anymore. They say he's having trouble catching up to average fastballs.
They whisper that he's done. Sometimes, they say it out loud.
"The thing about Magglio is he's not even driving the ball in batting practice," said one scout who has followed Ordonez's career. "The ball's just not coming off his bat."
Is he done?
They don't know for sure. They can't.
Two months ago, they said all the same things about Ortiz, right up to the time when he hit .320 with seven home runs in June. They said the same things last winter about Lee, and now he's leading the Cubs in home runs and RBI.
A season ago, the Mets thought about releasing a Carlos Delgado, then 35 years old, when he was struggling along in May with a .220 batting average, five home runs and 20 RBI. By season's end, he was an MVP candidate.
It's become one of the hardest questions to answer. Maybe it always was.
Is he done?
How do you know, especially now, as baseball emerges from the steroid era and players in their mid-30s begin to age as they once did? It's more expensive than ever to be wrong, because of vesting contract options.
When the Tigers sat Ordonez down earlier this year, agent Scott Boras publicly ripped them. At the time, Ordonez was 215 plate appearances shy of triggering an $18 million option for 2010, and Boras saw the benching as a way for the team to avoid paying the money (and instead paying Ordonez a $3 million buyout).
Manager Jim Leyland said the few days off (it ended up being five) were just another attempt to get Ordonez going. Ordonez played 13 of the next 14 games, but when the struggles continued, Leyland announced that he would be platooned with left-handed hitting Clete Thomas.
In an interview over the weekend at Yankee Stadium, Ordonez (now 158 plate appearances shy of vesting the option) said he fully understood Leyland's decision.
"I haven't produced," he said.
He talked about the difficulties of getting back without consistent at-bats. But he also expressed strong confidence that he can do what Ortiz did, what Lee did, what Delgado did.
"There's not a reason why not," Ordonez said. "I'm still young. I feel great. I'm not going to give up.
"I'm not done."
Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't.
I'm not good enough to be able to tell. Tigers players and coaches admit that they really don't know, either.
The interesting thing is how few times the contract option comes up when you talk to anyone associated with the Tigers. It would be naïve to say it's not an issue, because $15 million is a ton of money. But it would be just as naïve to think that saving money is the Tigers' only motive, because this is a team struggling to score runs and struggling to hold on to first place.
Those who know Ordonez say he worries less about the contract than the possibility that he gets released. And with Ordonez's diminishing role, and his continuing lack of results, a release seems like a greater possibility than ever.
One Tigers person said he wondered if the best idea might be to play Ordonez every day for two weeks, and then make a decision whether to keep him or dump him completely.
It's hard to know, just as it's hard to know what part the health problems Ordonez's wife suffered earlier this year played in his struggles. Someone pointed out that maybe his best swings of the season came in the days before he had to take five games off to be with his wife when she had surgery.
When Boras complained about the way the Tigers were handling Ordonez, he pointed to a batting average that didn't look that bad. Even now, Ordonez is hitting .260, which is well off his career average of .310 but not embarrassingly bad.
What sticks out more are the four home runs in 269 at-bats (he hit 21 last year), the 28 RBI (103 last year), the late swings on fastballs and the foul balls to right field. Ordonez doubled off CC Sabathia on Saturday, but it was on a ball that he sliced just inside the right-field line.
"My bat speed is right there," Ordonez insisted. "I'm just late when I swing."
Asked about whether Ortiz's rebirth was encouraging, Ordonez smiled and remembered back to when the Tigers and Red Sox met in the first week of June. Ortiz was hitting .185, and he had just one home run.
"He asked me, 'What's going on? What am I doing?'" Ordonez said. "I told him, 'You're going to be back. Just be patient.' And now he's back."
You want to tell Ordonez the same thing, but as you watch him, you're just not sure.
So you tell him what Sparky Anderson always said when a one-time star was struggling:
"Quality can always return. Mediocracy never was."
Mediocrity, mediocracy. Whatever. Either way, Magglio Ordonez wasn't it.
He was quality, and sometimes quality returns.
Is he done?
No one really knows.
