Guardians’ heartbeat José Ramírez has laid the foundation for a signature season
By Zack Meisel
Jun 20, 2022
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There’s an alternate universe where dinosaurs roam, chocolate chip cookies are nutritious and José Ramírez is donning a non-Cleveland uniform.
In that pseudo dimension, the 2022 Guardians season is far less compelling, the fan base is far more apathetic as a result of the organization’s decision-making, and the club’s path back to contention is considerably more clouded. Ramírez is a Padre or a Blue Jay or a Monstar, his desperate efforts to secure a long-term deal with Cleveland proving futile during chaotic negotiations in the visiting manager’s office at Chase Field in early April, before the team jetted out of Arizona.
There might not be a player in the league who is more valuable to his team. There might not be a player who more routinely makes worthwhile whatever price a fan paid for a ticket or a cable or streaming service plan. There might not be a player who — standing a tick above 5-foot-9 thanks to his flopping hair but parading around the diamond each night as though he’s wielding Aaron Judge’s frame — better represents his team, an often-overlooked performer who is forcing people outside Cleveland to take notice this season.
Ramírez is piecing together what could be his signature season, and the Guardians — thanks to his production at the plate, base-running acumen, energy, leadership and, most of all, his insistence on remaining a member of the franchise — are turning heads.
How the Ramírez extension materialized amid a day of madness
The components of an elite hitter
Could Jose Ramírez finish with more home runs than strikeouts? (Rick Osentoski / USA Today)
Let’s first take a tour through the museum of jaw-dropping Ramírez statistics.
Among the league’s qualified hitters, only teammate Steven Kwan (7.0 percent) has a lower strikeout rate than Ramírez’s 7.6 percent. Kwan represents the type of hitter who typically lands atop this category: those with high-contact, low-power profiles. Luis Arraez, José Iglesias, Michael Brantley, Yandy Díaz and Adam Frazier, who all rank among the leaders in strikeout rate, fit that description. Ramírez is the only player ranked in the top 12 in strikeout rate who has more than six home runs. He has 16. Of the players with 16 or more home runs, the next best strikeout rate belongs to Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, whose 15.7 percent rate is more than double Ramírez’s.
So, breaking news: Ramírez rarely strikes out. And in today’s version of the sport, in which strikeouts are trendier than NFTs, such a skill for a power hitter is impressive.
And it goes beyond that. He doesn’t swing-and-miss. Only Kwan and Arraez whiff less frequently. Pitchers can’t fool Ramírez, and though he hits for plenty of power, he doesn’t do so at the expense of making consistent contact, which is rare.
What fuels this, aside from his otherworldly contact ability, are Ramírez’s elite handling of the strike zone and his pitch-recognition skills. He ranks in the 92nd percentile in walk rate, with nearly twice as many walks as strikeouts. His BB/K ratio (1.7 to 1) is far and away the best in the majors. Eight qualified hitters have more walks than strikeouts; Ramírez is the only one with an OPS greater than .882. (His is 1.039.)
Ramírez also has racked up twice as many extra-base hits (40) as strikeouts (20), which is just absurd.
Ramírez: XBH vs. K
2016
60
62
2017
91
69
2018
81
80
2019
59
74
2020
34
43
2021
73
87
2022
40
20
He struck out three times in his last two games (before we learned he’s been dealing with thumb soreness), which is about as common as one of those eclipses that require the funky glasses to look anywhere near the sun. Before those three strikeouts, his strikeout and home run totals were nearly even.
Only twice in the last 65 years has a player recorded more home runs than strikeouts in a season while clubbing at least 20 homers.
Barry Bonds in 2004: 45 home runs, 41 strikeouts (and the most ridiculous stat line of all time, with 232 walks and a 1.422 OPS, the sort of numbers that wouldn’t even look sensical in a video game. And he was 39 years old. Yeah, yeah, the cream and the clear and whatnot. Just go along with this.)
George Brett, 1980: 24 home runs, 22 strikeouts
Before that, icons such as Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Johnny Mize, Stan Musial and Lou Gehrig accomplished the feat. (Ted Kluszewski also did it with Cincinnati for four consecutive years in the 1950s.)
It’ll be an uphill climb for Ramírez to join that group, and the current baseball environment makes such a task even more imposing, but it’s worth monitoring.
What to make of the RBI count
Well, when someone threatens a mark that has stood for 84 years, we might as well keep tabs on it. Ramírez has 62 RBIs. The Guardians have played 62 games. All right, mathletes, when you solve for the derivative of the logarithm using the mean value theorem and the factorial of the cotangent, we can determine that Ramírez is on pace for 162 RBIs.
His pace has cooled a bit in recent days, his pesky right thumb playing a part in that, as he missed the final two games at Dodger Stadium. Still, that’s a blistering pace, and if Mother Nature hadn’t tormented the Guardians for much of April and May, Ramírez would probably lead the majors in the category. As it stands, he trails Pete Alonso by one, but the Mets have played six more games.
Hack Wilson holds the league record with 191 RBIs in 1930. Manny Ramírez’s 165 in 1999 — the franchise record — are the most by any human being since 1938. That’s where the 84-year note comes into effect; if José can threaten Manny’s mark, he’d reach the top section of the all-time leaderboard, populated by guys who played during the Great Depression.
In 1999, Cleveland scored 1,009 runs, becoming the only team since 1950 to reach quadruple digits. In amassing 165 RBIs (in only 147 games), Manny benefitted from hitting among Roberto Alomar, Jim Thome and David Justice. The team’s two table-setters, Kenny Lofton and Omar Vizquel, hit .301 and .333, respectively, with on-base percentages of .405 and .397. Those batting averages are higher than the on-base percentages of the two players primarily hitting in front of José this season.
We can’t discount Manny’s .333/.442/.663 slash line, of course. But José has been batting behind Myles Straw and either Steven Kwan or Amed Rosario all season — both Straw and Rosario own a .298 on-base percentage — with some assembly of Franmil Reyes, Owen Miller, Josh Naylor and Oscar Gonzalez behind him. That comparison of lineup support isn’t exactly apples to apples; it’s more like apples to sardines. It’s surprising teams haven’t handled José with more care.
Ramírez with the bases empty: .252/.341/.487 slash line
Ramírez with runners in scoring position: .357/.493/.839 slash line (he’s been 154 percent better than league average in those situations)
Ramírez with two outs and RISP: .308/.571/.692 slash line (he’s been 150 percent better than league average in those situations)
Ramírez in high-leverage situations: 1.168 OPS
Ramírez in medium-leverage situations: 1.093 OPS
Ramírez in low-leverage situations: .926 OPS
The Great MVP Debate
We can (and surely will) argue all summer about Ramírez vs. Judge (and Rafael Devers and Mike Trout). It’s a healthy debate. It’s fun. And the eventual race might simply boil down to voter preferences. Ramírez is no stranger to this, having finished third in the AL MVP balloting in 2017 and 2018, second in 2020 and sixth in 2021.
This is shaping up to be his most productive campaign, and the one in which he demonstrates just how critical he is to Cleveland. Judge has the heftier home run total, but Ramírez, at the moment, eclipses him in fWAR and wRC+, a pair of vital metrics that encompass more of a player’s full output. (Devers leads the AL in fWAR, though he has played six more games than Ramírez.)
Judge
.305/.382/.654 (1.036 OPS)
189
3.8
25
50
4
11.6%
24.6%
Ramírez
.305/.397/.642 (1.039 OPS)
190
3.9
16
62
11
13.0%
7.6%
It’s difficult to pinpoint a weakness in Ramírez’s game. Year after year, he’s rated as an elite base runner, despite unspectacular speed (though he is in the 89th percentile in sprint speed this season, by far the highest ranking of his career). He hasn’t fared as well defensively this season, but he was a Gold Glove Award finalist last year. And, offensively, he’s a machine that rarely malfunctions. It took until Thursday — Game 59 — for Ramírez to strike out multiple times in a game in 2022. At that point, there had been 161 players with 10 or more multiple-strikeout games, and 17 players with 20 or more multiple-strikeout games.
Judge is playing himself into an Empire State Building-high pile of cash this winter, when he’s eligible for free agency. But remove Ramírez from Cleveland’s equation — a hypothetical that could have morphed into reality a couple of months ago — and the franchise, missing its heartbeat, would flatline.
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain
