Is it time to count David Ortiz out? (USATSI)
Is it time to count David O rtiz out? (USATSI)

We do this every year, it seems. David Ortiz gets off to a slow start and we start to ask the same question: "Is Big Papi finally running out of steam?"

The now-39-year-old faced questions about his future back in 2009, when he hit just .238/.332/.462, and then followed that up with 61 home runs over his next two seasons. He faced them in 2011, when he had just two home runs in the month of April, and again any time he goes through a slump. And every time, he has answered those questions emphatically with his bat.

This time, however, his slump seems deeper. This isn't just a bad month, or a few weeks without a homer -- he is hitting just .219/.298/.375 through the first two months of the season. This isn't just a run of the mill slump, then; this might be the worst 51-game stretch of Ortiz's career. It's gotten so bad that, with his bat failing to do much talking for him, he had to rebut a reporter's question Saturday about whether he is washed up.

"I'm not washed up. I guarantee you that. I can wake up and hit, bro. That's my nature. I'm not washed up."

The confidence is great, but Fantasy owners aren't particularly interested in those words. They just want to know when Ortiz is going to start looking like himself again, if at all.

Like any big-swinging lefty, Ortiz has long been better with the platoon advantage in his favor. He could hold his own against left-handed pitchers -- .807 career OPS -- but he was never quite as destructive against southpaws. This season, however, his ability to even hold his own against lefties has completely evaporated, and he isn't doing enough otherwise to make up for it.

Ortiz has been the second-worst hitter in baseball against left-handed pitching this season, with a .118 wOBA that ranks ahead of only Melky Cabrera among hitters with at least 50 plate appearances. He isn't striking out at a terribly alarming rate (18.6 K%), so some of the troubles can be associated with his .140 BABIP. However, that is giving him way too much credit, because Ortiz's plate discipline against lefties has disappeared.

Ortiz has yet to walk in 70 trips to the plate against a southpaw, and is swinging and missing against them at an alarming rate. Last season, Ortiz whiffed on just 9.7 percent of the pitches he saw from lefties, a mark that has ballooned to 13.2 percent. And this isn't just a general erosion of his skill set, as Ortiz is actually swinging and missing slightly less frequently against RHP than he did a year ago, while still posting an .877 OPS.

It isn't exactly shocking that Ortiz is struggling against left-handed pitchers at this stage of his career; it's more stunning that it hasn't happened before. Among his most similar players through age-38 on Baseball-Reference are big left-handed sluggers like Carlos Delgado, Jim Thome and Todd Helton, who remained useful late into their careers against RHP, but who were hard to run out there everyday when they started to slip as a result of platoon issues.

We should be careful to take too much out of Ortiz's decline, of course, because the sample size is still pretty small. His swinging strike rate against lefties has regressed, but it's based on just 272 pitches over 70 plate appearances, so it might not be as meaningful as it seems.

However, it certainly something to keep an eye on. At this point, Ortiz can't be relied on in daily leagues with a lefty on the mound, and Fantasy owners in weekly lineup leagues will want to keep an eye the probably pitchers and consider sitting him if the Red Sox have a run of lefties on the way.

Even the biggest bats slow down eventually.