Has the secret to Ryan Ritter's hitting streak been a toothpick?

Hitters may spend hours in the batting cage, hours analyzing video, hours with high-dollar performance coaches, hitting coaches and strength coaches — to reach their goals.

It requires dedication, hard work and perseverance.

Or, maybe hitters can do what Ryan Ritter — the hottest hitter on the planet over the past couple of weeks — has been doing.

“I have a toothpick that’s always in my back pocket,” said Ritter, the Albuquerque Isotopes shortstop who is the back-to-back reigning Pacific Coast League Player of the Week and in back-to-back games Sunday and Tuesday became the first Isotopes player to hit five home runs in two games.

Don’t get things twisted. The 24-year-old Ritter, who entered Wednesday’s game against the Sugar Land Space Cowboys on a mind-boggling 11-game extra base hitting streak, has absolutely put in the work. (He went 1-for-4 on Wednesday, with a single and a walk.) Hours and hours of it — in the field and in the cage — trying to work his way into position to achieve his dream of being called up to the major leagues.

But ask the 2022 fourth-round draft pick of the Colorado Rockies if he’s willing to rely solely on all that work preparing for his next at-bat and leave that good luck toothpick in the dugout, and you might as well be asking for a fight.

It ain’t happening.

“Routine slash superstition,” Ritter said, explaining why he’s been so hot with the bat in his hands of late. “I know what I need to do and I know what I want to do to feel prepared.”

And that includes never playing a game without that lucky toothpick, and not one of the old-school wooden kinds at the cash register of a small-town diner, either. Ritter is all about what is more appropriately called a dental floss pick — a small plastic contraption with a point at one end and a curve with a small strip of dental floss at the other end.

You see, inside any professional baseball clubhouse, and inside the mind of many a professional baseball player, live some of the most obsessive, quirky, seemingly absurd superstitions.

“I have way too many,” Ritter said. “Like, I have one where I’m driving here (to Isotopes Park), and I take a long, long turn (on one particular road) and then get back into the right lane. It might be illegal, I don’t know. Just putting my left sock on (first every day). Have a toothpick that’s always in my back pocket now. I could tell you a lot, but it’s, it’s just fun. It’s part of it.”

Ritter knows how it sounds. And he doesn’t care.

Why should he? Everything is working at the moment.

Entering Wednesday’s game against Sugar Land, Ritter’s name was atop pretty much every offensive category of substance for the month of May in the Pacific Coast League:

• Home runs: 1st (10)

• Doubles: 1st (10)

• Total bases: 1st (75)

• Hits: tied-1st (31)

• OPS: 1st (1.333)

• Slugging: 1st (.904)

• RBIs: 2nd (24)

With numbers like that, new Isotopes hitting coach Aaron Muñoz is just trying not to get in the way. And he sees nothing wrong with Ritter’s need to have a toothpick as a security blanket.

“That’s beauty of it,” Muñoz said. “I guess you guys call it superstition, but that’s we call routine sometimes, right? And that’s how you stay in the flow of things, especially in baseball. It’s a long (season), you know? You kind of want to continue the same routine throughout each day and continue to work.”

For Muñoz, who is just in his second week on the job with the Topes (though he’s been with the organization for more than a decade), he’s all about helping Ritter in any way possible with his swing, his approach to pitchers, or even with a quick trip to the drug store.

“I better go get some of those (toothpicks) and keep them in my back pocket just in case,” Muñoz said.