Alexei Ramirez, CWS: Getting What You Paid For…

I consider myself an expert in fantasy baseball yet I still feel obliged to provide detailed background information and a step-by-step analysis to help you understand how I’ve come to this particular conclusion.  Unfortunately, people don’t want to read incredibly verbose ramblings — they just want to know who to pick up and who to drop.

Alas, they start freaking out when players like Alexei Ramirez and Chris Davis start off slow and curse the websites that recommended them as draft-day steals. It’s for these people that I write this article, and I’d like to start out by saying, You Got What You Paid For.

There’s an incredible amount of statistics out there, and I’ve lamented about getting lost in them before. However, previous statistics are by no means prophecies, they’re merely indicators of what’s likely to happen.

The fantasy baseball community has become enthralled with statistics, and it’s almost impossible to find an article that doesn’t mention BABIP or OPS. However, if you’re not going to dig incredibly deep into the statistics to find out who a player really is, it’s probably best to just go off of the combo of pre-rankings and gut-feelings.

Alexei Ramirez

What The Experts Saw: 21 HR, 13 SB, .290 Batting Average, .475 SLG and only a 12% K-Rate.

You take a quick look at the statistics Alexei Ramirez put up in 480 AB, and they’re just ridiculous.  Looking at his 2008 statistics, it’s incredibly easy to predict a break-out year.

What The Experts Missed: Plate Discipline

42.7% O-Swing Percentage: Alexei Ramirez swung at almost 43 percent of pitches that were outside of the zone.  I’ve mentioned this before, but in 2008 only Vladdy Guerrero swung at more would-be balls.

A quick look at the top-10 reveals that free-swingers can succeed, but they have to be special, real special. To succeed with a lack of plate discipline, the player must have ridiculously quick hands.

Nothing’s changed in 2009 and Ramirez continues to sit amongst the leaders in first-pitch strike percentage. In 2008, Ramirez faced an 0-1 count 67.5% of the  time, and 2009 has seen that number increase to 69 percent.

With Ramirez’s lack of plate discipline there should have been more talk of a sophomore slump.  Unfortunately, the experts were so bullish on Ramirez’s potential that they over-looked his weaknesses.

Opposing pitchers have clearly caught onto Ramirez’s free-swinging ways, and have adapted.  In 2008, Pitchers threw Ramirez a league-average 51.4% of pitches inside of the strike-zone. With the book out on Ramirez, pitchers have adapted and are now throwing him a mere 42.5% of pitches for strikes.

Can Alexei Ramirez Adapt?

Ramirez is still swinging at 40 percent of balls outside of the strike-zone which is down 3 percent, but still well above league-average. Ramirez is also making less contact with the pitches outside of the zone.  His contact rate outside of the zone dropped from a respectable 70% to a downright nasty 64%.  None of these tendencies bode well for Ramirez, and they’ve come together to form the perfect-storm, resulting in a .157 Batting Average.

Ramirez has managed 4 walks thus far, which translates into a 15% BB-Rate.  It’s still far too early to tell, and the sample size is minuscule, but Ramirez is going to have to at least threaten pitchers with the possibility of a base on balls.  If Ramirez continues his free-swinging ways, he’s not going to get a single pitch to hit and he’ll continue to post awful numbers.

As I’ve maintained, this doesn’t mean Ramirez will be worthless for the remainder of the season; rather you just have to decide whether or not Ramirez is special and can adapt.  Ramirez is your prototypical mistake hitter and pitchers will continue to make mistakes from time to time, but unless Ramirez gives them a reason to throw strikes it’s going to be a long season for the Cuban Missile.

If You Went On Your Gut: If you caught 5 White Sox games last year, and didn’t bother looking at Alexei Ramirez’s advanced statistics — what would you say about him?

Boat-loads of potential. Swings at Everything. For Ramirez, Contact means Hard-Contact. Doesn’t walk.

Even the casual White Sox fan would give you that scouting report, it’s nothing special.  The next logical question is, What’ll happen when pitchers stop throwing him strikes?

This is what I call going on your gut — Watch a player, ask yourself a question — It’s really that simple.  Posing a few What Ifs? will go a long way in drafting a fantasy baseball team.

You may love looking at Ramirez’s Isolated Power, Batting Average on Balls In Play,  or Line Drive percentage but sometimes just watching a ball-player play ball can be far more useful.

…Next up is Chris Davis of the Texas Rangers, and then maybe Pablo Sandoval of the Giants — Realistically, all of these pre-season sleepers possess the same fatal-flaw:  Pitchers have all adapted to their free-swinging power-potential ways, and the book’s definitely out on them.  The question for all of them is whether or not they can counter-adapt.