The Boston Sports Media May Have Woken Up A Sleeping Giant In Hanley Ramirez
Hanley Ramirez belts a solo home run to center field, extending the Red Sox's lead to 5-3 in the bottom of the 6th inning!!! #MLB pic.twitter.com/Njjb8Yy3u0
— TheRenderMLB (@TheRenderMLB) June 30, 2017
You’ve done it now, Boston sports media. When asked a week ago about Hanley Ramirez’s performance at the plate, or lack thereof, I basically said that I was surprised at how much of an impact the absence of David Ortiz has had on Hanley. I felt that if Ortiz were still here, we wouldn’t be seeing sore shoulders and neck tweaks being the reason why Hanley was passing up the chance to play first base, especially when the Red Sox could’ve used him there after Mitch Moreland fractured his toe. Clearly Moreland can still hit, as he had three consecutive games with a home run with that fractured toe. But the opportunity to flip flop Hanley at first and Moreland at DH would’ve given the team the chance to get Moreland off his feet for a little bit.
On Wednesday, Hanley had an exchange with reporters where some Boston scribes “informed” him that he wasn’t performing well against lefties. There’s a common misconception that Hanley is some airhead dope that coasts through life without a care in the world. The truth is, Hanley is very, very self aware. He knows what the perception of him is, and he knows what’s being written about him and said on TV and radio. Sports radio ran with this exchange with reporters as if Hanley was being serious. In reality, he was just being civil with reporters and essentially trolling them as if to sarcastically say, “Wow, I’m not performing well? Gee, I didn’t know that! Thank you for the information, guys! Go fuck yourselves!”
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Some members of the media were even going as far as to grouping Hanley in with Pablo Sandoval, who I, and probably most, think is absolutely useless. Hanley is far from useless. When he’s not performing, I think it is most certainly fair to point to his motivation. Why? Because this is now two years in a row, assuming that Hanley goes on a serious run from here, that he’s sort of been called out in the media for his lack of production at the plate, followed by him proclaiming that he was about to get hot…and then he did.
I guess that’s probably the most frustrating part is that it seems like if he wants to just flip a switch and start tearing it up at the plate, he can. It remains to be seen where the rest of the season goes from here, but in his first time back in the lineup after missing a few games due to a hit by pitch on the knee, Hanley destroyed a 3-0 fastball to dead center.
Gun to my head, does he hit that home run if he hadn’t been called out by reporters the day before? Honestly, I don’t think so. And I’m not pumping reporters’ tires here in an attempt to make them feel like they have more power than they actually do. My point is that perhaps there was a lack of motivation on Hanley’s part, and that exchange might’ve woken up a sleeping giant. Me personally, I don’t care what motivates Hanley, whether it’s the media, the fans, David Ortiz, being back in the organization where his career started, whatever. All I know is that a motivated Hanley Ramirez is a bad, bad man when he steps into the batter’s box, so I hope the fire that was lit under his ass stays red hot, because the Red Sox are going to need him.
Also, this moment was fucking hilarious. He was so fired up after he hit that home run, barking at the NESN cameras and slapping a cup of water out of this dude’s hand. Love to see it.
Mookie Betts also went deep last night, launching his team-leading 13th home run of the year. I’m sure Yankee fans get a nice chuckle out of that knowing that Aaron Judge has more than double that. While Judge leads the league with 27 homers, Betts leads the league with 26 doubles, which is nine more doubles than he had last year through his first 76 games. However, Mookie had three more homers last year than he does this year through 76 games, but his OPS is almost identical. Through 76 games last year, Mookie’s OPS was .836, and after last night’s two-hit performance, his 2017 OPS is up to .834. He finished last year with an .897 OPS, though, so hopefully that means that a major hot streak is on the way.
After David Price gave up one run in the first inning, the tweets started to roll in like, “YOU BETTAH CALL OUT PRICE FOR BEIN A BUM CARRABIS HE SAHKS DOOD!” He ended up going seven innings, three earned, seven strikeouts and NO WALKS. I mean, in fairness, it was another “good not great” outing but the two biggest things you need to take out of this start — no walks, and no homers allowed. The velocity has been there since he rehab starts, but he wasn’t locating well at all up until these last two outings. Those are two very encouraging signs coming out of that start last night. He’s now made seven starts since returning from the disabled list, and last night was the first time that he did not allow a walk, and his second consecutive start in which he did not allow a home run.
It depends on where your expectations are at in regards to whether or not you care about small victories, but with Price, you should. The more removed we become from the meeting with Dr. James Andrews back in March, the more we sort of detach ourselves from the reality that Price barely avoided having season-ending surgery before the season even started, but here he is making his seventh start of the year in late June, going seven innings against a first place Twins team. And by the way, Price’s average fastball velocity last night was 95.92 MPH, which is the fastest average fastball velocity he’s had in any start he’s ever made with the Red Sox.
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Final score: Red Sox 6, Twins 3