You’ve heard of wanting to be like Mike. Joey Ortiz wanted to be like Bill.
As Milwaukee Brewers hitters filed through the batting cage at American Family Field in the build-up to their 6-4 victory in the series opener against the San Diego Padres on May 12, a thought crossed Ortiz’s mind.
“I was watching William [Contreras] and was like, ‘I want to be like William today,’” Ortiz said.
BOX SCORE: Brewers 6, Padres 4
It was purposefully simple. In a world of complex hitting mechanics, with all sorts of different thoughts coming the way of the scuffling shortstop, this was decisively plain.
Ortiz watched the way Contreras attacked the baseball – violent yet within himself. He observed the looseness of Contreras’ fingers on the bat, like a fiddler with a different wooden instrument in his hand.
An hour or so later, Ortiz stepped into the box and tried doing the same himself. The first swing – on a sinker right down the middle from Padres right-hander Matt Waldron – came up with air.
The second did not.
Ortiz turned on a two-strike knuckleball from Waldron, the first Ortiz had ever seen in his big-league career according to Statcast, and roped it 395 feet to left for a homer. As he geared up for the swing, there was a little bit of William in there too, as he loosened his index finger from the bat before ripping it through the zone.
It was Ortiz’s first long ball in nearly 10 whole months, since July 19, 2025 at Dodger Stadium. You bet it felt good, and not just for Ortiz.
“The kid’s been through a lot,” manager Pat Murphy said. “His defense has been fantastic. We know it’s in there. The whole team was so excited for him. One of the neat things was to see how the team reacted. It was like a walk-off. Guys were on the edge of their seats.”
Ortiz’s difficulties at the plate not only this year but for a prolonged stretch are well-documented. He entered the night batting .181 with one extra-base hit. Since July 1, 2024, he was batting .217 and slugging .312.
“It felt good,” Ortiz said. “All I’ve been worried about is trying to take good swings. Get good pitches to hit and take good swings on them. The results will take care of themselves.”
The homer may not have even been Ortiz’s best swing of the night. His next time up, during the Brewers’ five-run fourth, he took a 78.9 mph hack at a first-pitch sinker with the bases loaded and nearly hit a grand slam, but the ball died at the warning track for a 381-foot sacrifice fly.
“Hit a ball hard in the air. That’s what you want to do every at-bat,” Ortiz said. “I got a good pitch to hit as well and took a good swing on it. It’s something to build off of.”
Ortiz will need to do plenty of building off it still to get his season back on track – and potentially keep his job.
A duck snort to right in the sixth gave him his first multi-hit game since April 28 and raised his OPS above .500 since April 11.
Milwaukee has been willing to keep trotting Ortiz out there because of his defense, but the offense has raised questions about how long it can keep doing that. The Brewers have gotten next to nothing from shortstop this year, with Ortiz and David Hamilton combining to slug .197 at the position entering the day.
“It’s been tough on him, let’s be honest,” Murphy said. “Tough on the kid. He spent the whole last year playing every day at short and did an incredible job.
“His offensive numbers obviously were below league-average but he was on a winning team and doing winning things. Kept his composure even though offensively he wasn’t performing as good as you’d like. But, man, you can’t replace that defense.”
The Brewers, Murphy acknowledged last week in St. Louis, “aren’t going to shy away” from what the future holds at shortstop with prospects Cooper Pratt and Jesús Made at Class AAA and AA, respectively.
That future may not even be that far away, if Ortiz continues to struggle at the dish.
Pratt, who already signed an eight-year extension and is on the 40-man roster, has taken immense strides of late in his quality of contact and is running a 52% hard-hit rate since April 25. With improved swing decisions, Pratt is also walking more than he strikes out at Nashville.
The Brewers’ preference to play shortstop in the short-term, though, remains Ortiz.
As long as he continues to give them reason to keep giving him chances, all signals from the past two years indicate that’s exactly what the Brewers will do.
“Joey gives us the best chance to win today,” Murphy said last week. “He’s a tremendous defender. This team has averaged 95 or so wins the last two years when he’s been here. He’s a big part of that. I love the kid. As long as he’s on our roster I’m going to keep going with him as long as the situation calls for it.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: With Cooper Pratt heating up, Joey Ortiz makes a statement of his own
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
