Can Jose Ramirez Rebound? History Say No.

In Tout Wars this season, I’ve run Jose Ramirez out every week. I have no issues sitting a struggling star but in Ramirez’s case, I’m basically running out Billy Hamilton which helps with steals.

One of the following stat lines in for Billy Hamilton and the other for Jose Ramirez

A. .227/.302/.280 with 16 SB
B. .211/.299/.320 with 18 SB

Which one is Ramirez?

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) June 24, 2019

I’ve been waiting for a rebound but nothing so far. He’s hit .286/.310/.500 this past week but it’s just acceptable. It’s not enough to offset the horrible weeks. The numbers are lower than his preseason projections. Today, I want to determine if any hope exists for an offensive rebound. How often has a hitter been projected to hit as well as Ramirez and then struggled so bad and did he rebound? It doesn’t look good.

Before the season, he was projected for .884 OPS and now his OPS sits at .620. I like to use OPS since it’s available on almost every website. Taking all the Steamer projections (only back to 2010), I found the hitters who were projected for an OPS over .850 but had on OPS lower than .650 in the season’s first half. I used first and second half splits because I felt it was a waste of time to find the split from some random day in the middle of June. Also, I took hitters projected for at least 400 PA and had 100 PA (approx one month) in the season’s first half. I wanted results who didn’t have a small sample size OPS because of an injury. A total of six hitters made the cutoff (ranked by 2H OPS).

There are two distinct groups. Those who stayed unproductive (Dunn and Morneau) and those who snapped out of the funk. Here the quick look at what brought each down.

Adam Dunn

• Power decline: 21% HR/FB to 10%, .276 ISO to .118
• BABIP tanked: .329 to .240
• Strikeouts up: 31% to 36%

Justin Morneau

• Power decline: 17% HR/FB to 4%, .274 ISO to .106
• BABIP tanked: .385 to .257
• Walks down: 14% to 7%
• Pitchers attacked with fastballs: 33% FA% to 40%

Adam Lind

• Strikeouts up: 17% to 25%
• Power down: 20% HR/FB to 12%, .257 ISO to .155
• BABIP tanked: .323 to .253

Joe Mauer

• Power down: .141 ISO to .045
• Bad plate discipline: 11K% to 16% , 9% BB% to 7%
• Higher groundball rate: 47% GB% to 64%
• BABIP down: .348 BABIP to .293

Aramis Ramirez

• BABIP down: .331 BABIP to .220
• Strikeouts up: 13% to 20%

Carlos Gonzalez

• BABIP down: .346 BABIP to .264
• Power down: .207 ISO to .118

Here is how the four improved:

Adam Lind

• BABIP and ISO jumped: .253 to .306 BABIP, .155 ISO to .231

Joe Mauer

• BABIP and ISO jumped: .293 to .333 BABIP, .045 ISO to .103
• Plate discipline returned: 16% K% to 9%, 7% BB% to 11%

Aramis Ramirez

• BABIP and ISO jumped: .220 to .270 BABIP, .173 ISO to .250
• Strikeout rate dropped: 20% to 15%

Carlos Gonzalez

• BABIP and ISO jumped: .264 to .390 BABIP, .118 ISO to .217

While Mauer and Ramirez saw some plate discipline changes, each one saw both their BABIP and power increase. The smaller the HR/FB decline, the more they rebounded.

Name: Y-1 HR/FB, 1H HR/FB, Diff

• Dunn: 21%, 11%, 10%
• Morneau: 17%, 5%, 12%
• Lind: 20%, 12%, 8%
• Mauer: 7%, 0%, 7%
• Ramirez: 12%, 10%, 2%
• Gonzalez: 17%, 10%, 7%

While each player lost some power, those who saw their home run rate plummeted couldn’t rebound. I wonder if some of the power loss from the rebounders was linked to doubles and triples turning into outs. A smooth play by the first baseman could prevent a double lower the player’s BABIP and ISO.

Taking this information back to Jose Ramirez, he rebound chances don’t look good. His plate discipline is down (1.33 BB/K to 0.81 BB/K) but his power is way down (.282 ISO to .109, 17% HR/FB to 4%). It’s not like his HR/FB% is improving, it’s getting worse every month (5.1% to 4.9% to 2.6%). In the meantime, his BABIP has only sunk from .252 to .230. It is by far the smallest change in BABIP for this group.

For those owners hoping he becomes the exception, here is a link to his 20-day rolling average of ISO and HR/FB% (link).

The power production needs to start trending up at some point.

Jose Ramirez’s fantasy owners must accept that fact they may have a Billy Hamilton clone on their hands. He’s showing a complete lack of power and almost none of his struggles are BABIP driven. Besides the power drop, his plate discipline is down. If Hamilton is playable, so is Ramirez but owners shouldn’t hope on a rebound.