Writing about Jose Ramirez’s struggles this season is difficult, and not just emotionally. It’s difficult because, well, where do we start?
Ramirez can’t do anything right this year. His numbers are down versus righties, versus lefties, against fastballs, breaking balls… the list goes on. In one offseason he’s went from MVP candidate to Felix Fermin.
Rather than ramble on about all the ways in which Ramirez can no longer hit, I’ll keep this brief and focus on one specific area where he’s shown the biggest regression: fastballs from right-handed pitchers.
This short video above give a good visual representation of Ramirez’s struggles:
Obviously early in the season we immediately look to Statcast’s expected results (based on launch angle and exit velo) to see if a batter is actually getting worse. In Ramirez’s case, the answer is mostly yes.
Although he is getting unlucky (especially in the power department, where his xSLG is .200 points lower than his actual slugging percentage), he’s still posting career lows. Ramirez’s expected batting average versus RHP fastballs of .260 is easily his worst since becoming a full time player in 2016. And his expected slugging percentage versus RHP fastballs has also dropped from .604 last season to .513 this year.
The next questions to ask is: are pitchers attacking him differently?
Righties are throwing him slightly more fastballs up in the zone (39 percent in 2018 up to 44 percent in 2019), but that’s a league-wide trend to combat the launch-angle phenomenon. It probably isn’t a Ramirez-specific approach.
In fact, during the 2017 and 2018 seasons, Ramirez generated a .644 slugging percentage versus fastballs in the upper third of the zone, so entering this season it would not have made sense for that to be an area pitchers were looking to exploit.
So if he isn’t getting particularly unlucky and pitchers aren’t attacking him differently to exploit a known weakness, then what’s wrong? There are only two other explanations left.
It’s possible Ramirez is injured. His numbers from the left side of the plate have been consistently worse than right side, which could be an indication of a minor injury affecting his swing from that side. Maybe a nagging ankle or wrist injury?
It’s also possible Ramirez just didn’t take the offseason seriously. He’s coming off consecutive MVP-caliber seasons, he’s 26 years old and he’s under contract through the 2023 season. He certainly wouldn’t be the first player to take it easy in the offseason after establishing himself as a star and with no potential payday dangling out there are a carrot.
Hopefully the reason can be explained away by a minor injury, because that’s potentially fixable during the year. The Indians have been notoriously secretive about injuries in recent years (remember in the 2017 postseason when the absolutely insisted Kluber was fine), so this is the theory I’m going to stick with until we hear otherwise.
Either way, this is a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.