The White Sox announced that infielder Bryan Ramos has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding move to open a roster spot for right-hander Seranthony Domínguez, whose signing is now official.
Ramos, 24 in March, was an international signing out of Cuba back in 2018. He charged up prospect lists a bit in 2022. He stepped to the plate 519 times that year between High-A and Double-A, hitting 22 home runs. He produced a combined line of .266/.338/.455 and a 114 wRC+. The Sox added him to their 40-man roster that November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. Baseball America ranked him the #3 prospect in the system going into 2023.
Things haven’t been going as well for the past few years, however. He still had decent numbers in the minors in 2023 but missed time due to injury, only getting into 81 games. Over the past two seasons, he has a minor league slash line of .228/.314/.392 and an 82 wRC+. He has also stepped to the plate 120 times in the majors with a dismal .198/.244/.333 showing.
Ramos used up his three options over the past three campaigns. Now that he’s out of options, it was going to be tougher for him to hold a roster spot going forward. He has dabbled at first base, second base and left field but has primarily been a third baseman in his career. The White Sox signed Munetaka Murakami to cover first base, which will likely leave Miguel Vargas as the regular at third. The Sox also have guys like Chase Meidroth, Luisangel Acuña, Brooks Baldwin, Curtis Mead and Lenyn Sosa as other options for the infield corners.
All of those factors have squeezed Ramos off the roster and into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Sox could take five days to explore trade interest. His out-of-options status won’t help him land with another club but perhaps some team out there is intrigued by his former prospect pedigree. If he does land somewhere, he has less than a year of service time and can therefore be controlled for six full seasons.
Photo courtesy of Jesse Johnson, Imagn Images
Oh. Who is he?
A 23 yr old kid from Cuba who worked hard and can say he has 30+ games of playing Major League Baseball … You?
Yet another development win for Chris Getz.
Not really, seems like they aren’t high on him.
It was sarcasm
He’s rightfully criticizing that Getz was a bleepshow as farm director with position players. Ramos is carry over from Hahn/KW era and another “prospect” expected to become relevant under his responsibility. Failing upwards under Reinsdorf as long as you kiss the ring/know office politics.
It doesn’t really help the KW and Hahn were terrible at drafting to begin with. No PD director would have succeed with them at the helm.
Kenny’s ego was so big he couldn’t make competent decisions and Rick at this point feels like he was mostly a proxy GM happy to cash a check for taking blame for Kenny.
They were garbage and deserved to be fired.
That doesn’t absolve Getz from blame for sucking at his job under them and he’s wildly unqualified for the GM job. He’s a mealy mouthed suck up and that’s the only reason he’s here. He’s spent the last decade whispering to Reinsdorf his plans and so far I’m unimpressed.
So far he seems to mostly think the team needs light hitting, defensively limited middle infielders at every defensive position, players like Chris Getz.
There’s plenty of criticism for Getz, like you listed. He did well in the Crochet deal, along with catching fire with R5 picks Shane Smith and Mike Vasil along with other reclaimation projects such as Erick Fedde and Mike Tauchman.
Brian Ramos was yet another Cuban international free agent who was signed by the previous Kenny Williams/Rick Hahn regime back in 2018. Chris Getz had already come over from the Kansas City Royals organization to be their director of player development from 2017 to 2020. Getz did “oversee” the initial development of Ramos during that time frame when the prospect had more “shine” and production.
In 2021 Getz was promoted to assistant GM and then took over full team operations in 2023 when Jerry Reinsdorf fired Williams and Hahn.
There’s no telling if Ramos would have ever been signed by Getz if he was running the White Sox back in 2018. It’s a safer bet to assume that had he been in charge, the White Sox international scouting system still in place would have already begun undergoing the process of modernizing to where it is presently.
Clearly the White Sox have more international “pipelines” available to them outside of Cuba than what was occurring during the White Sox “mired in mediocrity” era under the previous front office. 🙂
I’m ok with losing him.
It’s okay, White Sox have enough infielder depth.
Been injured and bad the last 2 seasons and no options remaining. Not a good combination for Ramos. I doubt he gets claimed.
Yes, there’s a good chance that Ramos will go unclaimed and return to the White Sox as yet another infield depth option at AAA this spring…assuming they still want him. Ramos doesn’t have the “right” yet to become an MLB free agent unless the White Sox release him after his DFA/waiver process is complete.
Ramos lacks the 6 years of MLB service time to become a FA. He’s not scheduled to become arbitration eligible until 2029 so he’s not even in line for a December non-tender. As I said before, his only option to become a free agent is for the White Sox to move on from him but he will still be subject to the same status with his next MLB organization.
Me too. I’m trying to think what about him would inspire a claim.
Dumb move,they never gave him a chance and he is a better batter than Derek Hill and younger. Bad move here.