Erasmo Ramirez

The Nationals have released right-hander Erasmo Ramírez, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He had been designated for assignment earlier in the week.

Ramírez, 33, has had a very rough go of it so far this year. Through 27 innings over 23 appearances, his ERA is 6.33. His 4.8% walk rate is excellent and his 43.1% ground ball rate is close to average, but his 10.3% strikeout rate is less than half of the 23.9% league average for relievers across the majors this year.

That’s a significant drop-off from last year, when he posted a 2.92 ERA in 86 1/3 innings with a 17.6% strikeout rate. On the heels of that solid campaign, the Nats retained him by signing him to a one-year deal with a salary of $1MM for 2023. But that investment hasn’t paid off and Ramírez has lost his roster spot.

It’s not a shock to see him end up released as he would have been able to reject an outright assignment anyway. All players with more than five years of major league service time have the right to elect free agency instead of accepting such an assignment, while retaining all of their salary. The Nats have simply skipped that formality and sent Ramírez to the open market.

They will remain on the hook for that money while Ramírez will be free to sign with any other club. Should he get a roster spot somewhere else, that club would only be responsible for the prorated league minimum salary for any time spent on the active roster, with that amount subtracted from what the Nats pay.

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.