WARNING: All of the numbers presented here are absurdly skewed by virtue of the incredibly short sample.

Less than 5 percent of the season has been played. If one were to draw conclusions from such a tiny window, Dustin Pedroia never would have gotten a shot in the majors, and players like Julio Lugo (.320/.414/.400/.814 line through seven games) would have looked like All-Stars.

More often than not, numbers over such a short period of time are unrepresentative. It is no doubt with that notion in mind that Red Sox manager Terry Francona declared anew his fealty to David Ortiz in his weekly visit to the Dale & Holley Show on Wednesday. (For the complete transcript, click here.)

Francona is aware that Ortiz is hitting .136 with a .436 OPS, and understands that the 34-year-old has struck out in a staggering 11 of 22 at-bats (24 plate appearances). All the same, just as was the case when Ortiz got off to a dreadful start in 2009, Francona is inclined to give his longtime lineup centerpiece more time before tinkering with his role.

“As a manager you better err on the side of caution. Because you can’t just treat these guys like chess pieces. I don’t think that works,” said Francona. “If you’re going to make a change, you’d better damn well be sure you’re right. And that’s what we’ve always tried to do.”

It would come as little surprise were Ortiz’ numbers to look dramatically different a week from now. That was the pattern that took place both in 2009 and in spring training. So it may not be long before the statistics that Ortiz has amassed thus far look significantly different to the point of near irrelevance.

Even so, a closer look at what kinds of counts a player is getting into, when he is choosing to swing, and what kind of contact he is making can help to gain some clarity about a player’s performance, even over a short period of time.

That being the case, here is an attempt to look at some key indicators of why David Ortiz has endured a brutal start to the 2010 campaign. These numbers will tell us little about whether or not he will emerge from his funk, but they do offer some insight into what’s happening in his at-bats.

Here, then, are five things that the numbers (provided by Fangraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com) tell us about the season-opening struggles of the longtime Sox lineup mainstay:

HE’S NOT MAKING MUCH OF A FIRST IMPRESSION

In his career, the first pitch has typically been one on which Ortiz has done major damage. Since breaking into the majors, he has swung at 28 percent of first-pitch offerings, and with good reason -- Ortiz has 50 career homers on first pitches, more than in any other count. He has a career .365 average and 1.074 OPS when putting the first pitch of an at-bat in play.

This year, however, Ortiz is seeing fewer first-pitch strikes than ever before. In his career, more than half (54.5 percent) of the first pitches he’s seen have been strikes. This year, that number is down to 41.7 percent.

But even when he does see first-pitch strikes, he is rarely swinging at them. He has swung at the first pitch in just two of his 24 plate appearances (8 percent); ordinarily, he would have swung at more than three times that rate (28 percent). He has had eight first pitches called for strikes.

So, for whatever reason, he is taking an approach that is more passive than usual. Clearly, he is not expanding the strike zone, but to this point in the young season, he has not appeared to be in an aggressive position to attack the opponents’ offerings.

That said, Francona cautioned that it could be a mistake to ask Ortiz to alter that approach, particularly given that he has seen a major-league leading 5.0 pitches per plate appearance.

“I never want to go up and tell someone, ‘Just go up and whack the first one you see,’” Francona said. “I love the fact that he’s getting deep into counts, because the more he does that, that’s going to help him. He’s going to get better pitches to hit.

“We talk sometimes about how if you get a check swing on a breaking ball in the dirt in a fastball count, you’ve got to earn the fastball. If you lay off the breaking ball, you’re eventually going to get a fastball in the zone that you can handle. I think he’s in between a little bit. I don’t deny that. But I love the fact that he’s seeing pitches.”

HE’S GETTING INTO HITTER’S COUNTS…BUT NOT HITTING

Ortiz has gotten to 3-1 counts in one-third of his plate appearances (8 of 24), the highest percentage of any qualifying regular in the majors. That is nearly three times his career rate of 12 percent.

Yet those good counts aren’t doing much to help him. In contrast to his typical excellence in 3-1 counts (.367 average, 1.447 OPS with walks in more than half of his plate appearances), pitchers are challenging him on those counts, and Ortiz isn’t doing anything to discourage them from doing so.

He’s swung at four 3-1 pitches, going 0-for-2 (one weak pop-up, one sharp grounder to second) and hitting two foul balls. After getting to a 3-1 count this year, he is 1-for-6 with a double and two walks, good for a line of .167/.375/.333/.708.

HE ISN’T SWINGING AT PITCHES OUTSIDE OF THE STRIKE ZONE…BUT HE ISN’T SWINGING AT STRIKES, EITHER

Ortiz simply hasn’t been very aggressive thus far, regardless of the location of pitches or the count.

He is not expanding the strike zone. He has swung at just 15.9 percent of pitches out of the strike zone, a mark that is 29th (of 212 qualifying hitters) in the majors. That is below his career norm of swinging at 18.5 percent of pitches outside of the strike zone.

But it is not merely pitches outside the strike zone that Ortiz isn’t swinging at. He’s become something of a spectator in the batter’s box.

Ortiz has swung at 33.7 percent of the pitches he’s seen this year, the 16th lowest rate in the majors. Of the 65 strikes Ortiz has seen this year, 24 (37 percent) have been looking, well above his career average of 25 percent. So, he has taken roughly eight more strikes than would have been the case over a representative stretch of his career.

WHEN HE IS SWINGING, HE’S NOT CONNECTING

Ortiz has swung at 41 pitches this year. He’s missed 18 of those, resulting in a dreadful contact rate of 56 percent. That is the second worst mark in the majors this year, ahead of only Kyle Blanks of the Padres.

His career contact rate is 77 percent, so in a typical stretch of his career, he would have swung and missed just nine or 10 times. That includes the 2009 season, when he had a contact rate of 76 percent.

OPPOSING FORCES

It would be a mistake to suggest that Ortiz has always benefited from driving the ball to the opposite field. Indeed, his career -- including his time with the Red Sox – suggests otherwise. Based on career totals, Ortiz has unquestionably been at his most deadly when pulling the ball.

On balls that he’s pulled, Ortiz has a career line of .429/.425/.933/1.358.

On balls that he’s hit up the middle, Ortiz has a career line of .318/.314/.588/.903.

On balls that he’s hit to the left side of the field, Ortiz has a career line of .342/.332/.557/.890.

In every season of his Red Sox career, Ortiz had significantly better numbers when pulling the ball than he did when hitting to the opposite field. That, however, seemed to change in 2009.

Here is how his numbers broke down last year:

Pulled: .322/.319/.635/.954

Middle: .301/.296/.575/.871

Oppo: .356/.347/.699/1.045

The 2009 campaign marked the first for Ortiz as a Red Sox when he had better numbers hitting the ball to left field than to right. Perhaps it was a one-year aberration.

But given the way in which the Sox were celebrating his RBI double to left-center against the Twins on Monday, there seemed to be a sense that driving the ball to left field now gives Ortiz a better chance to succeed.

“He may have gotten away from that a little bit last year when he was struggling early,” hitting coach Dave Magadan said during spring training this year. “He’s got enough pop the other way to do damage, hit the ball out of the park. He’s not a one-dimensional hitter using one side of the field or another.”

It is worth mentioning that of the 12 balls that Ortiz has put in play this year, three (25 percent) have been to the opposite field. So, he has not been significantly off from his career average of hitting 18.6 percent of balls to the opposite field.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN PREMATURE CONCLUSIONS...

For those searching for optimism with Ortiz -- with seven games in the books, and 155 left to come -- the numbers suggest that:

--He has been getting into hitter’s counts on which he typically does damage;

--He has not been expanding the strike zone;

--His approach has not been simply to pull the ball, but he is instead trying to react to the location of the pitch.

On the other hand, one also sees a portrait of a hitter who, in the words of manager Terry Francona, is getting "caught in-between," and who is missing when there are pitches that, in past years, he likely would have been prepared to drive. Ortiz:

--Isn’t swinging at strikes;

--Isn’t connecting with the ball when he is swinging;

--Is passive in the box;

--Isn’t taking advantage of good counts when he gets into them.

Amidst all of those conclusions, there are two others that have little to do with the numbers.

The first is that Ortiz has a manager who is willing to remain patient with his early-season struggles. The second is that he does not have forever to reverse his misfortunes of a year ago.

Early in 2009, the Sox could wait on Ortiz to regain his productivity because they had no alternative, at least not in-house. The team’s reserves consisted of players such as Chris Carter, Jeff Bailey, Mark Kotsay, George Kottaras, Julio Lugo and Rocco Baldelli. None had the pedigree or health to suggest a player for whom a demotion of Ortiz was justified.

That is no longer the case. With Mike Lowell and Jeremy Hermida available on the bench, the Sox have offensive alternatives that were not around a year ago. And so, while Francona is capable of exhibiting Solomonic patience with a player who he believes still capable of producing, he will not wait forever.