2011 Red Sox Community Projections: David Ortiz Surprises Everyone

Remember how nice having some semblance of the old David Ortiz back for 2010 was? It was a pleasant surprise in an otherwise disappointing year, and seemed like it would help us ease into the end of David Ortiz' career compared to the rather jarring drops of 2008 and 2009. No, we didn't expect that Ortiz would continue to be the old Ortiz. Maybe he had another 2008 in store for us? Solid production, but not spectacular.

Yeah, to hell with that.

David Ortiz' 2011 was the real deal. Maybe it wasn't quite as ridiculous as 2005-2007, but this was near-prime Papi hitting balls all over the park with some regularity. Forget about ending his career, now the DH is looking at a multi-year contract!

It was fun to watch, but not exactly easy to predict, as you'll see:

Ortiz has already been removed from the Sox widget list, so check the first line for the actual figures.

While you all were pretty accurate with Ortiz' homer numbers, what he did in the rest of the game was pretty far removed from expectations. That's a total of five near-misses in all the rate stats, only one coming from OBP and average as almost everyone shot terribly low.

Our winner for this round is pretty easy to select, as Push not only was one of the five, but was close on PA and hit dead-on with his 29 homers. Congratulations, Push, you win nothing at all!