In their run of five playoff appearances in the last six years, the Red Sox have experienced enough roster turnover to achieve a fundamental change of identity. Just two members of the current lineup were part of the team’s playoff roster in 2003.

Despite the altered composition of the team, one element seemed a constant. Amidst the change, David Ortiz remained a force capable of dominating the playoffs. 

Ortiz has been baseball’s signature October hitter this decade. He entered the 2008 playoffs with 42 RBIs (tied-7th in playoff history) and 28 extra-base hits (tied-8th).

In his last 34 playoff games, dating to Game 5 of the 2003 ALCS, he was hitting an otherworldly .386/.490/.732 with 10 homers and 34 RBIs. There were only three games in which he had been held hitless in that span.

Now, Ortiz has matched that number of oh-fers in the first three games of the American League Championship Series against the Rays. He went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in yesterday’s 9-1 loss to the Rays.

In the series, the slugger is hitless in 14 plate appearances, having gone 0-for-10 with four walks. The fact that a postseason legend has yet to collect a single hit in the ALCS has even Tampa in a state of disbelief.

“I would have said he must have got walked every at-bat (to go hitless through three games),” said Rays outfielder Carl Crawford. “You definitely don’t expect that.”

So how has Tampa managed to keep Ortiz under wraps?

“We’ve been lucky,” said Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon, before offering a smirk. “Residue of design.”

The Rays have varied their approaches to Ortiz in each game. Their pitchers have emphasized their strengths, working on the corners as well as just off both the inside and outside corners of the plate.

In the first game, Rays pitchers James Shields and J.P. Howell threw off-speed pitches on 14 of their 18 pitches. In Game 2, Ortiz saw 17 fastballs and 15 off-speed pitches from Scott Kazmir and three relievers. Last night, Rays starter Matt Garza pursued a more straightforward strategy.

“I just told myself, attack this guy,” said Garza. “I just kept going away, going away, and made him kind of expand his strike zone. He sure enough did.”

Garza challenged Ortiz with mid-90s fastballs, mixing in five curves with 11 heaters. He worked away early, getting him on a called strike three in the first (after Dustin Pedroia's one-out double) in what the Rays starter deemed one of the key tone-setting at-bats of the game. Thereafter, Garza got a seemingly frustrated Ortiz to chase fastballs that were off the inner edge of the plate.

Overall, Ortiz has seen 37 fastballs this series: 14 have been balls, eight were called strikes, 10 were foul balls and three were swings and misses. Ortiz has put just two fastballs in play this series, flying weakly to center both times.

Even when Ortiz is expecting a fastball, he is missing his pitch—a nearly unthinkable outcome in past playoff series. Whereas he demonstrated what G.M. Theo Epstein once described as a Ted Williams-like approach in postseason games by defining his strike zone and refusing to expand it, he has been prone to chasing pitches off the plate this series.

Ortiz is no doubt struggling, though of course the talented Rays pitching staff deserves plenty of credit as well.

“We’ve got some power arms,” said Rays pitching coach Jim Hickey. “Power arms are the way, usually, to neutralize power hitters.”

Indeed, the Rays pitching staff is clearly among the most talented in baseball. Though the franchise was a perennial loser in its first 10 years of existence, players said that they sensed the tide turning in spring training.

Tampa would line up a succession of pitchers—Kazmir, Shields, Garza, Edwin Jackson, David Price and others—and suddenly realized that it had the potential to shut down opposing lineups.

“Just seeing their stuff in spring training—they all throw hard, mid-90s, with good breaking stuff,” said Crawford. “They had the potential to get out good lineups.”

“To watch six or seven guys throw bullpen sessions in a row, to watch the stuff,” added Hickey, “you could see right off the bat that this was a team that could compete very, very deep into the season, maybe the postseason, too.”

Now, the Rays—who finished the regular season with a 3.82 ERA, second lowest in the American League—are living up to that potential. They have held the Sox to three or fewer runs in seven of their 18 regular season meetings.

With the exception of Kazmir’s poor start (five runs, 4.1 innings) in Game 2, the Rays have absolutely stifled the Sox, with the rest of their staff forging a 2.19 ERA in 24.2 innings. That reflects in no small part the team’s ability to shackle Ortiz completely.

“You feel very fortunate when you get through a game and he has not impacted it for the Red Sox,” said Rays skipper Joe Maddon.

“If you can hold those guys in check—especially the Ortiz guy there in the middle,” said Hickey, “you’ve got a pretty good chance with this lineup right here.”

For their part, the Sox are trying to downplay the significance of the hitter’s struggles. Obviously, they are a better team with Ortiz crushing the ball.

But the team feels that it won in the Division Series against the Angels, when Ortiz was a minor factor (.235 average, .350 OBP, .294 slugging), and that it is capable of beating the Rays regardless of his performance.

“I would love to see him crush the ball and put some home runs up there. But I don’t think we’re totally dependent on David Ortiz,” said Sox starter-turned-long reliever Paul Byrd. “I think we have some other great guys, some other power hitters, some speed in our lineup.”

The Rays, meanwhile, do not presume that they can continue to dominate a slugger who has been an indomitable postseason presence for the past five years. Tampa points to the three homers that Ortiz hit in a three-game series against them in September as a reminder that the pendulum can swing.

“He could break that (slump) at any moment,” said Maddon. “I don’t trust him. I think he’s one of the best players of my generation.”

If, however, Ortiz does not soon start playing to that standard, then the Sox will find the challenge of advancing to the World Series ever more daunting.

Alex Speier is a Senior Writer for WEEI.com.