When it's all said and done, David Ortiz may go down as the greatest designated hitter of all time. Ortiz is not, however, known for his defensive skills (although I feel as if he's generally better than people expect at first base). This afternoon's game marked an extremely rare occasion in which Ortiz played first with the DH position available--the last time Big Papi started a non-interleague game in the field was August 5, 2006 (and the last time he did it at Fenway Park was July 15, 2005).Clearly the Red Sox pitchers were aware of this, because they did an incredible job of allowing Ortiz to avoid actually having to play defense. Of the 27 outs recorded, 14 were strikeouts, 10 were fly balls, one was a caught stealing and one was a bunt that hit the batter in fair territory. The only other out was a grounder to Ortiz, who flipped to the pitcher covering first base.
Boston went the entire game without its first baseman making a single putout. If that sounds a bit unusual, well, yeah, that's because it is:
From @EliasSports: Today marked the first time in the franchise's 17,867-game history that the Red Sox did not have a 1B record a putout.— Jon Shestakofsky (@Shesta_Sox) July 6, 2015
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