The Giants signed lefty Horacio Ramirez to a minor league deal, tweets Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ramirez, 30, pitched only 22.6 big league innings for the Royals in 2009 after re-signing for a surprising $1.8MM in December '08. He was designated for assignment in June, and landed with the Nationals' Triple A club. Ramirez made 16 uninspiring starts for Syracuse.
A 30 yr old lefty with a career winning record…why not sign him?
Because having a winning record doesn’t matter, that’s why.
Hey Brian,
How bout we quit with the mediocre relievers and get Timmy locked down!!!!!
dont you know? this is much more important than timmy. i like when we sign guys i have never even heard of. and the only memory i have of kim is when he collapsed crying in the ’01 world series against the yankees.
First Kim now Ramirez… Wow good thing im a braves fan lol
Never heard of Ramirez, but I know Kim. It looks like this is the Giants final attempt to get a 5th starter. Personally I’m surprised at what they did this off season, with getting both Uribe and Molina back on 1 yr contracts. Hopefully they made the right choice in signing Huff over somebody like Smoltz or Wang. Anybody know how Prior, Ponson, P. Martinez, or Mulder are doing? I think a major problem is the leadoff, I don’t know about you but I don’t want to rely on Aaron Rowand getting on base to start the game, or even at all for that matter. I think Schierholtz wins RF, but he could easily lose that if Torres, Velez, or maybe even Burriss or Lewis do something in spring training. They have options with the outfeild, unfortunately they aren’t very good. They have confidence in Renteria coming back so I will give him a chance but if he’s batting .260 through 200 AB, I want Uribe to play everyday if he’s repeating last years performance. Let Posey play in the minors for the first half to get some more experience. Bumgarner probably needs more practice too, but he will be starting at some point this season.
Ramirez is a pretty bad pitcher but every team needs a couple of guys in AAA who can come up to the big league club in an emergency situation and maybe make a start, or throw a few innings in long relief. Now if Ramirez starts out on the 25-man roster on Opening Day, then it was an incredibly stupid move, I’ll grant you that.
For those of you that have never heard of him Ramirez was once one of the brightest pitchers in the Braves Organization. As a 23 year old rookie in 2003 Ramirez went 12-4 with a 4.00ERA striking out 100 in just short of 200 innings best I remember. He suffered his first big injury in 2004 early in the season, despite early succes with a sub 3.00ERA, and dint get back on the field. The following year he rebounded somewhat with around a 12-10 record and a 4.67ERA, but over 200 innings and it appeared he may be a very nice MOR pitcher for years to come. He had another season ending injury early in 2006, though at the time he was still on par with his numbers from the previous season. Atlanta finally pulled the plug though the following off-season trading him for Rafael Soriano of the Mariners. Ramirez got rocked in about 20 starts with an above 7.00ERA and under 100IP. I don’t believe he’s started a game since then, though I do believe he had some success as a reliever in 2008.