Red Sox manager John Farrell said Thursday that Ortiz will be out of the lineup for a few days to work some things out, WEEI reports. According to Stefan Stevenson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ortiz is out of the lineup for Thursday's game against the Rangers, and it sounds as if the veteran slugger will likely miss another game or two. While his strikeout and walk rates are nearly identical to last season's, there's a mounting pile of evidence that Ortiz isn't making as good of contact. Given his lack of speed and the consistent shifts he sees, Ortiz needs to crush the ball to approach even a league-average BABIP. There's likely some poor luck involved in his current .227 BABIP, but according to FanGraphs, his hard-hit percentage (32.1) is way down from last season (45.0), and he's hitting more pop-ups than ever before. Of course, the sample size still isn't all that big, and Ortiz has overcome early-season slumps multiple times in recent years. He'll still have every chance to work his way out of the slump after taking a few days off.