The Giants have designated reliever Neil Ramirez for assignment and selected the contract of fellow reliever Bryan Morris from Triple-A, according to a club announcement.
Ramirez inked a minor league deal with the Giants over the winter and then made the team’s Opening Day bullpen. Things didn’t go well for the 27-year-old, though, as he threw 10 1/3 innings with the Giants this month and allowed 15 earned runs on 16 hits. However, Ramirez did post a lofty strikeout total (18) while limiting walks (four). His issues preventing runs this season have stemmed from a somewhat high home run-to-fly ball ratio (13.3 percent). The long ball was an even bigger problem last year for Ramirez, who spent time with the Cubs, Twins and Brewers and allowed homers on 21.1 percent of fly balls, leading to a 6.00 ERA across 24 innings.
In 57 2/3 frames with the Cubs from 2014-15, Ramirez only surrendered HRs at a 4.3 percent clip. Thanks in part to that stinginess, and a 10.61 K/9 and 3.59 BB/9, he recorded a 1.87 ERA during those two seasons. Ramirez has long had difficulty generating ground balls, however, as the 2007 first-round pick has done so just 28.3 percent of the time in 92 career big league innings.
Like Ramirez, the 30-year-old Morris signed a minors pact with the Giants during the offseason. Although he has registered below-average strikeout and walk rates per nine (6.4 and 3.77), the former Pirate and Marlin owns an impressive 2.80 ERA in 280 innings. He has helped his cause with a 58.6 percent grounder rate.
He was painful to watch yesterday. Not as bad as Stratton, but painful.
I’ll say
I got to go have dinner early since the game was so unwatchable. The girlfriend can thank Stratton and Ramirez for that.
The Giants are different than the other 29 teams. When most teams prepare for next year in the offseason, they add their necessary pieces and lots of needed depth. They prepare for injuries because that is a part of baseball. However, the Giants time and time again go into the next season looking like a deer in the headlights. They needed relief pitching after losing a bunch of key arms last offseason, highlighted by Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla. Also they lost Javier Lopez to retirement and ditto with Affeldt. The Giants spend all of their offseason money on 1 pitcher, Mark Melancon, a stud closer, they added some minor league depth, but nothing significant . I guess what bothers me (as a Giants fan) is how come management keeps going into EVERY offseason with the same frame of mind. They don’t prepare for the inevitable—-injury.
They got away with it in 2010-2012-2014, (the latter 2 years had a horrible second half due to lack of depth after injury). But how long can they get away with this? In 2016 they flopped due to bullpen struggles and again, due to lack of replacement pieces.
This run is over, I hate to say. FIRE BOBBY EVANS AND BRIAN SABEAN.
I don’t agree with a lot of this but I do think that evans really hasn’t been able to pull off what sabean did when he was GM – and that is really scouting out and picking up good rule5 pieces, low level trades and invitees – if you look al the sabean era as GM there was essentially 1 major trade and/or acquisition and that w.as hunter pence (mayybe you can say pagan), everyone else during that era was an under the radar found money guy. Evans has generally followed the far less lucrative ‘get the last out of veterans you have seen a lot’ pattern that really isn’t working out.
New to baseball, or just the Giants? It’s a great sport, you’ll figure it out.
You are definitely on to something. The giants entire bullpen needed to be fixed. Signing 1 guy doesn’t fix their issues and it is showing. They should have taken the marlins route and signed multiple middle end relievers
Bullpens, and depth in general, are best fixed through the draft.
I think the Giants generally draft well. I’m not sure what they get from the third day of the draft, which is where good, cheap, long-term relief help can come from.
I have said this about Sabean for years. They won 3 WS in 5 years and that was great but Bochy sucks too.
Neil Ramirez had a nice start to his MLB career with the Cubs in 2014 but it’s been downhill ever since. Ramirez is still just 27 and will surely get another shot. Perhaps the White Sox will have some interest in signing him as an insurance depth piece for their AAA Charlotte club.
White Sox manager Rick Renteria was Ramirez skipper with the Cubs in 2014. Perhaps pitching coach Don Cooper can fix him if and when he might merit a promotion later this season. It’s not like the White Sox don’t have a few veteran bullpen “flip” candidates of their own as the summer trade deadline approaches. Maybe Ramirez can fill one of those roles later this year to go along with the likely promotion of top organizational relief prospects Zack Burdi (#7) and southpaw Brian Clark. (#29).
The injury to Will Smith hurt because that left the Giants with no lefties in the bullpen. They brought up Okert and he’s been decent but is still very green and can’t carry the burden alone.
That, and Josh Osich failed to build on his promising debut in 2015.
The Giants clearly thought they had a lot of younger relievers who were ready to step up. Clearly, they haven’t done that as a group yet.