Bio
C Jake Ortega returns to Sioux City where he played in 70 games in 2023, hitting .265 with four home runs and 26 RBI. Ortega would slash a line of .265/.368/.368 while catching in 41 games and would add another18 games at third base for the X’s. Ortega got off to a fast start to the season with a six-game hitting streak, going 9-for-25 and hitting .346 in the month of May. In June, he would hit .282 with a home run and 12 RBI, including a season-high nine-game hitting streak (14-for-37) from June 9 to June 18.
Ortega finished fourth on the club with 14 multi-hit games for the Explorers. He had two three-hit games in a pair of wins for Sioux City during the season. He would go 3-for-5 on June 7 in a 12-9 win over Sioux Falls at Lewis and Clark Park, and on July 14 he would go 3-for-5 in the X’s 8-5 win at Fargo-Moorhead, adding a homer and two more RBI. The California native would record back-to-back two-hit games on July 27 and 28 part of his15 two-hit games, a stat good for third on the team. Defensively, Ortega was forced to play 18 games at third base during the season and would have a 1.000 fielding percentage. In his 41 games behind the plate, Ortega would throw out 11 runners in 59 attempts for a 19% caught-stealing percentage.
Ortega comes to the Explorers after taking the year off baseball in 2022, originally inking with the team on May 2, 2023. Ortega spent four seasons with Cal State-Bakersfield before being drafted by the Mets in the 28th round of the 2019 MLB Draft. He spent 2019-2021 in the minors, reaching AA in 2021 with the Mets organization.
In 2021, Ortega split time between AA and rookie ball, playing in 19 games at the rookie level and batting .269 with a .713 OPS. With AA Binghamton, he didn’t play much, only seeing action in five games and having 12 plate appearances. Before that, he split his first full professional season at Low-A and High-A in the Mets organization. Between the levels, he played in 32 games and held a .242 batting average with a .307 OBP. In his two pro seasons with the Mets organization, he threw out 27 runners in 71 stolen base attempts for a 39% caught stealing percentage.
Ortega was drafted by the Mets in 2019 after having an outstanding senior season at Cal-State-Bakersfield, batting .326 with a .418 OBP and .818 OPS in 53 games that year. In 2018 he hit .245 in 47 games with 14 RBI. During his 2017, sophomore season, he batted .322 with a .390 OBP over 41 games after hitting .286 in his freshman season in 44 games. Ortega is a career .273 hitter across 364 games between professional and college ball. Behind the plate, combined in his career he has a 31% caught-stealing percentage. Ortega is a 2015 graduate of Capistrano Valley High School and hails from Mission Viejo, California. He was selected to the 2013 and 2014 Perfect Game Underclass honorable mention All-American list and was named to the 2013-14 Southern California Top 20 All-Star Team.