December 20: The Nats have made it official, announcing the deal today. Ramirez will earn a base salary of $1MM, reports Andrew Golden of The Washington Post, though there are a further $1MM in incentives available.
December 15: The Nationals and free-agent righty Erasmo Ramirez are working to finalize a one-year, Major League contract, tweets Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post. Jon Heyman of the New York Post first reported the talks and indicated that Ramirez’s contract will contain bonuses that can push his salary north of $2MM, suggesting that the base salary is a ways south of that sum. Ramirez is represented by Mato Sports Management.
The well-traveled Ramirez has bounced around the league in journeyman fashion over the past half decade but will now spend consecutive seasons with the same team for the first time since 2017-18. Ramirez originally joined the Nationals, his fifth team in five years, on a minor league deal last March but quickly emerged as an important long reliever just a few weeks into the season. The veteran righty appeared in 60 games for Washington, tallying 86 1/3 innings of 2.92 ERA ball. His outings were regularly in low-leverage, long relief situations — often with the games already out of hand — but Ramirez’s results were still strong.
Last year’s 93.9 mph average fastball was a career-best mark for the 32-year-old Ramirez, as was his minimal 4.0% walk rate. The increased velocity and improve command still only resulted in a below-average 17.6% strikeout rate, but Ramirez kept the ball in the yard for the most part (1.15 HR/9) and did a decent job avoiding hard contact (88.7 mph exit velocity, 4.9% barrel rate, 35.7% hard-hit rate). For a journeyman addition on a minor league contract, the Ramirez deal worked out about as well as the Nationals could’ve realistically hoped.
He’ll now return to a bullpen that was quietly a solid group for Washington in 2022, ranking 15th in the Majors with a 3.84 ERA. Ramirez won’t supplant any of Kyle Finnegan, Carl Edwards Jr., Hunter Harvey or top Rule 5 Draft pick Thad Ward in Dave Martinez’s bullpen, but there are enough journeymen and unproven options that it shouldn’t be that difficult to clear out a spot in the ’pen. The Nats will have to make a corresponding 40-man move to accommodate Ramirez’s return.
Surprised there wasn’t a tad more interest for him on the market because he was probably the only NAT to perform decent.
Everyone is improving their bullpen except my team.
Yeah, I’m shocked.
Yeah, that was sarcasm.
Every night before I go to bed I thank God that I’m not a Red’s fan.
I grew up during the Big Red Machine years and got hooked. I was thinking that’s how it should be every year until Dick Wagner came along and broke it up.
Of course, it was a different game then. It was more of a level playing field. Sure you had bad teams but that was more just bad management than anything else.
Problem is, that Big Red machine team would never be able to stay together now, even in the big markets. We’ll never see anything like that again.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Whose the reliever we want to know
Erasmo
I smell something cooking, oh wait its just my burnt toast from this morning.
Hope he performs like he did last year, for the most part.
This guy was awesome last season. Very important part of their bullpen. Great signing.
Erasmo, what a great name.
The reason for my tongue-in-cheek nickname! Underrated movie, underrated lefty.
Then whey spell it different from the movie? But yes, both underrated lol
Can’t believe he’s still around. I haven’t noticed him in the slightest
Has great control. May feel good pitching in Washington as a veteran as opposed to going to another team and fighting for a job.
Wow, this article 4 paragraphs. Story about Aaron judge signing- 22 paragraphs.
Ice Melted
Erasmos 2009 minor stats with Seattle are some of the most insane I’ve ever seen at any level.
Put Erasmo at the top of the list of guys who threw over 80 innings of sub 3 ERA ball and I had no clue.
Whose uniform is he wearing?
It’s cool…..