An Early Look at Jose Ramirez, Outfielder

Jose Ramirez is the kind of baseball player everyone should love. He’s enthusiastic, talented, fast, has a good glove and is only 23 years old and already in his fourth MLB season. He has been willing to do everything the team has asked him to do from being a pinch runner to being the starting short stop or part time outfielder. That being said, he is not the superman that some would make him out to be.

Any player being asked to take on a new job should struggle a bit and asking Ramirez to be an outfielder was really an out of nowhere request for him considering the fact that he played only second, short and third from his first year in the Arizona Rookie League (2011) through 2014. In that season with Columbus, Ramirez played three games in center and one in left, then in 2015 he played just two in left during the entire season between Cleveland and Columbus. In Spring, he got a little more work in making four starts in left and one in center, playing left at some point in four other games as well. Considering that most Major League outfielders have been playing the position since at least high school, it seems like a lot of ground to make up in under 20 games.

Now that he has played a whole 50 innings in a Major League outfield, we can start to see what kind of player he could be out there. To start, there have definitely been some shaky situations. In his first MLB game in left in fact:

The important thing to note here is that Ramirez did make the play, even if he took an odd route. The fact that he was able to recover from initially turning the wrong direction speaks to his adaptability. Once he gets more playing time in the outfield, he will undoubtedly gain more confidence and improve upon his initial reactions.

One part of his game that he shouldn’t have to work on much is his arm, like in this play to save the Manship from sinking against the Mets. This is one area the Indians have seen much success in previous season when moving an infielder to the outfield, particularly third basemen Lonnie Chisenhall and years earlier, Casey Blake. It may be a small sample size, but players who have an arm strong enough to play third, or even too strong as they may often overthrow first, appear to have the perfect arm strength in corner out field spots. Alex Gordon is probably the most perfect example of this as he turned into a Gold Glove outfielder thanks to his electric arm.

Onto more than anecdotal evidence, Fangraphs.com has Ramirez saving 1.1 more runs than the average left fielder as of April 20th, equating to a 31.7 UZR/150 over a full year. This is still much too early to take these projections seriously (Marlon Byrd projects to a 207.5 UZR/150 and Rajai Davis 76.1, both also unreasonable numbers), but it is a good sign that he is starting positively.

Breaking that down a little further, Ramirez is considered positive in all three aspects of UZR, arm (0.9), range (0.2) and error rate (0.1) and I wouldn’t expect any of these number to drop considerably. In fact, as he continues to learn the ropes, his range should increase thanks to better reads off the bat.

There is still the question of what the future holds for Ramirez. Even with Chisenhall and Tyler Naquin on the roster Wednesday, Terry Francona went with Ramirez in the outfield against a right handed pitcher over Davis or Byrd. This is an interesting move considering that both have a longer history in the outfield, Davis is a better defender and that Byrd is hitting .385/.429/.615 against RHP. If this trend were to continue, it could very well mean Ramirez will continue to play regularly in the outfield once Michael Brantley returns (hopefully this weekend). At this point it could be difficult to find playing time for Byrd, Ramirez, Davis and Naquin with Brantley and Chisenhall starting at the corners.

On a personal note, in general I’m against such a swift transition from infield to outfield (or any major position change). The fact is, the Indians knew Francisco Lindor was coming and Jason Kipnis was here already when Ramirez made his debut. If they wanted to get him more playing time they could have started his transition to outfield when he was demoted last June or simply not signed Juan Uribe and he could have started at third base. Instead, Ramirez is learning on the fly, giving him the chance to make beginners mistakes that he could have made in AAA at the Major League level in games that matter.

Even if the Indians didn’t realize they wanted him to play more until the end of the 2015 season, they could have asked him to play outfield in the Dominican Winter League, where he was injured while playing in the infield. In this world of “what if?” Ramirez may have been able to get a considerable amount more game time in had he been playing in the outfield and thus avoided the hard slide that lead to him being taken out on a stretcher. Even after that, Ramirez wasn’t tested in the outfield until the middle of Spring Training when he could have been working out with the outfielders in practice from day one. These types of moves seem very reactionary and are not the kind of thing you want to see for long term stability.