The Padres have released shortstop Alexei Ramirez, according to AJ Cassavell of MLB.com (Twitter link). Cassavell reported Saturday that the Padres were unlikely to pick up their end of Ramirez’s $4MM mutual option for 2017 during the offseason. A day later, his time with the Padres has ended. He’ll collect what’s left of his $3MM salary for this season and a $1MM buyout for 2017.
After a subpar 2015 in his final campaign as a member of the White Sox, with whom he spent the first eight seasons of his career, the Padres bought low on Ramirez during the winter. However, he failed to live up to his modest deal. As a result of both Ramirez’s poor performance and the rebuilding Padres’ shift toward youth, the club began phasing the soon-to-be 35-year-old out at shortstop recently, instead turning to the likes of Jose Rondon and Luis Sardinas.
The right-handed Ramirez began working in right field as a way to stay in the Padres’ lineup against southpaws, but that wasn’t enough for him to remain with the team through season’s end. Ramirez batted a disappointing .240/.275/.331 in 440 plate appearances with the Padres and wasn’t any better in the field, where he’s currently last among 2016 shortstops in Defensive Runs Saved (minus-17) and Ultimate Zone Rating (minus-14.4). All told, he has been worth a league-worst minus-2.0 fWAR this year.
Before his decline began in earnest last season, Ramirez was a useful player for several years. The one-time All-Star batted a combined .275/.313/.395 with 78 home runs in 3,868 trips to the plate from 2009-14, also playing no fewer than 148 games in each season, adding 105 steals and totaling 18.5 fWAR.
About time. He was so terrible.
Finally.
-2..3 rWAR. Contrast that with this guy Trea Turner, who has a 2.5 WAR in 45 games. He has outperformed Ramirez by nearly five wins in less than half the games played. That’s insane.
Ah, that is brutal. Good riddance Ramirez! Someone brought up the idea of possibly going after Darwin Barney in the offseason & I wouldn’t be opposed to that at all. He has played well as a bench/platoon guy in Toronto & isn’t far removed from a lot of people thinking he was going to be the next young stud with the Cubs 4 years ago.
Maybe we catch lighting in bottle like the Brewers did with Villar? Change of scenery with an opportunity to play everyday. The Padres are still at least a couple years away from getting one of Giron, Urias, Tatis Jr, Potts, Almanzar close to sniffing big league ball so why not roll the dice on a guy like Barney?
Barneys a known commodity now though unlike villar. If he plays everyday, he’ll get exposed at the plate. That is the type of thinking San Diego has to do though. Maybe target younger guys like Derek Dietrich or Ryan Goins
No need to pick up another utility. Theyll probably roll with Sardinas and/or Rondon at SS. Schimpf will either start at 2b or be a super utility off the bench. Can even take over 3b if Solarte is traded.
No need to bring in Barney. Thy will just roll with Sardinas and/or Rondon.
But we all know the Myers trade was worth it because Turner is unproven!
*eyeroll*
Lol exactly Ryan. I been wondering did I get banned from the FB group for loving Trea or wtf happened to it?
And alonso has been worth -0.8 WAR according to fan graphs while myers has been worth 3.5 WAR. So you just go from having an awful ss to an awful 1st on the year had alonso stayed w the padres.
That’s a good point, it’s really a catch 22. And Myers for Ross and turner might be a bit of an overpay by San Diego, but it’s not terrible like people make it out to be. You have to give quality to get quality
But it has to be in proportion. The Nats likely wouldn’t trade Turner for Myers straight up right now. And that’s not even considering that we gave up Joe Ross and Jake Bauers in that trade.
Shortstops are harder to find than first basemen. Turner has put up as much rWAR in 46 games as Myers has in 130.
Myers put up as much in his 50 game hot stretch as Turner has in his hot stretch too. WAR does not always continue to trend up over a larger number of games played, and Turner’s will begin to drop off as he gets busted inside with more hard stuff more frequently.
Shortstop is the more valuable position and the Padres also gave up Jake Bauers in that trade, who is a first baseman and is almost Major League ready.
I really like Jake. Really nice kid with good baseball instincts. He’s also not someone you’ll regret not having in the organization. He doesn’t have the power to play at first base and the experiment to try to make him an outfielder was predictably uninspiring.
I know seems lazy to comp him to the guy with the exact same profile from the same HS program and with the same age-relative-to-competition track record, but there really is nothing that points to him being anything but Daric Barton v 2.0.
And Brian Dozier hit .230 with 2 home runs in half a season of AAA and look at him now. I’d take Turner, Ross and Bauers back for Myers in a heart beat. There’s no guarantee that Myers will play more than 120 games in a year either. He’s a china doll, much like Alonso before him.
Dickerson at 1b and Turner at SS sounds better than Myers at 1b and open SS competition. Hopefully Sardinas or someone proves themselves. Even Gyorko is playing better SS this season than Padre players.
We need to give Sardinas a full shot at the job. He was a highly rated prospect with Rangers and shows flashes of it now. It would be so nice if he can solidify SS for us. Go Friars!
If he could even play decent defense Sardinas might be worth a full time shot.
I could see the inept management team for the White Sox bringing him back to Chicago
Arizona or San Diego … Which worst braintrust in MLB? Go
Arizona. Stewart and La Russa didn’t even know how the rules for international free agents worked. That’s an automatic disqualifier.
Where is SDSUPhillip who said that Ramirez was a good shortstop?
That he was, never said he currently is.
When he said he has been bad for a long time, you said, and I quote, “That is simply not accurate”. You were right that he is not JUST terrible, he is THE worst and has been for two seasons.
The last time he had a year above “passable” or league average was 2012. That is a long time ago. 4 seasons of declining defense starting with a 1 DRS in 2013 and going downhill fast from there. Even if you are trying to use UZR as your defense of him, he has been below league average since the 2014 season. He has never had a season offensively that was more than 1.0 WAR and that was in 2014 when his defense has fallen under league average and he hit .273/.305/.408. Hardly groundbreaking. So no, he was NOT an average or above average starting shortstop until 2015. That boat sailed much earlier.
Ramirez has been terrible for years. I understand that The Padres had to move on from the Clint Barmes and Alexi Amarista experiments, but Ramirez’ decline was quite obvious. He used to be a decent defensive shortstop who hit for a bit of power and stole a few bases, but this year has hit 5 homers in 444 ABs and is 6 for 15 in steals. He is quite cooked.
Still waiting for you to tell me who plays shortstop for the Padres in 2017 and beyond.
Probably Rondon? He can’t hit but has a good glove. Sardinas can’t hit or really field the position, so I doubt it’s him. I’d love to see the Padres work out a deal for Jurickson Profar, but they probably don’t have the bullets for that.
People need to stop talking about Profar. He’s a free agent after 2019.
If Rondon is at SS for the first half of the season, it will guarantee he won’t be for the second. His glove won’t play at SS.
People have already given up on Guerra? A few months ago, the Preller lovers were talking him up like he was the second coming of Barry Larkin and would be on the verge of stardom and in the starting lineup next year. He was a big part of the Grand Theft of Boston we received in the Kimbrel deal, after all. The Padres seemingly do have minor league talent at the position, starting with Rondon, but all seem to have question marks about their ability to field, hit or whether they will eventually grow out of the position, and Rondon’s the only one who’s played above High A ball..
And the Padres traded Trea Turner and we’re basically left with Ramirez and Amarista
I think at this point, it’s sort of a well-known acceptance that the absence of Trea Turner is really hurting the Padres right now, especially with the way he has been producing with the Nationals since they called him up. We all know at this point that Preller screwed the pooch on that trade, so it’s sort of redundant to keep bringing it up, like opening up an old scab.
Alexei Ramirez is not what he was last year. I do not agree that he had been terrible before this year.
Many in Baseball uses worthless statistics such as WAR like the Wall Street hustlers use their many worthless statistics just to confuse the general public. Most people don’t understand the numbers. In this case, its simple. In 2015, Alexei Ramirez (206-462-16) was a better defensive SS than NL GG Brandon Crawford (191-427-13). How about AL GG Alcides Escobar (217-417-13)? How was Ramirez a terrible defensive SS and Crawford and Escobar GGers? Answer: Voter Ignorance.
What do those numbers even mean? Are we using errors and putouts again? You do understand we have way more detailed data about balls in play now than we used to. A statue that doesn’t make any errors is still a statue.
PUT OUTS-ASSISTS-ERRORS. You don’t need statistics based off other secondary and tertiary statistics. Just like over complicated financial statistics, more sophistication doesn’t aid in good judgment, it allows phonies to prosper.
What is an error?
Or it allows for there to be a more in-depth method of analyzing a concept…
An error is defined by an official scorer, nothing more or less. And more information is never a bad thing, right?
If you’re going to be an ignoramus, you can at least pick old-school stats that don’t point out how wrong you are.
Ramirez had more assists and putouts than Crawford because he played 149.2 more innings in the field than Crawford did. On a per-inning basis, Crawford had more assists and putouts, and fewer errors than Ramirez.
Escobar had more assists, slightly fewer putouts and significantly fewer errors than Ramirez on a per-inning basis. The same is true if you use total chances (which is even before you consider the fact that Crawford and Escobar actually touch a higher percentage of balls put in play in their general direction than Ramirez has dreamed of getting to for the last two years).
By the use of errors as the only determinant of fielding, wouldn’t Kevin Kouzmanoff be the greatest third basemen in the history of the game? He didn’t drop any balls hit directly at him. He didn’t get to much hit to either side of him, but he was good if it was toward him.
Maybe u guys should reach out to the Dodgers n see what other fat contract they would like to unload on your team. just saying. Maybe theres another Grandal you guys can afford to lose.