Hanley Ramirez Moves to Hollywood

Hanley Ramirez’s trade to the Dodgers was a move by Miami to transfer the salary of an under performing player with the hopes of putting that money to better use. With the move though, Ramiriez’s fantasy value changes very little. His new teammates will see some increase in value, but expectations should be tempered.

Rameriz’s fantasy value really doesn’t change much for several reasons:

1. The production around him will be similar because the Dodgers are averaging 3.9 runs per game (12th in NL) and the Marlins are averaging 3.8 runs per game (14th in NL).

2. The HR park factor for each home park is the same (98).

3. It is tough to tell how his SB chance will change. Both the teams do attempt more SB than the league average value(85 SB). The Marlins have attempted 119 SB to date while the Dodgers stand at 95 attempts.

With all that information, Hanley may see a small bump in his Runs and RBIs and the rest of his stats will likely stay constant.

The other change with Hanley on the Dodgers is that he will hopefully give them a better bat at SS or 3B. Here are the triple slash lines for him and the values for all the Dodger starters at those positions so far in 2012.

Ramirez: .246/.322/.428
SS: .232/.285/.320
3B: .246/.306/.369

It looks like the best position for Ramirez to take over would be SS, but that will probably not be the case. Dee Gordon started the season as the Dodgers’ SS and played in 78 games before tearing a UCL in his right thumb. Offensively, Gordon was a distaster this year hitting .229/.280/.282. Since going down, journeyman Luis Cruz has taken over at SS and hit .241/.297/.448. Not great, but better than Gordon.

I think the disaster for the Dodgers has been 3B. Here are the number of games Juan Uribe, Jerry Hairston and Adam Kennedy have started at 3B over the last 14 games.

Hairston – 5
Uribe – 5
Kennedy – 4

Additonally Cruz, Justin Sellers, Ivan De Jesus and Elian Herrera have started at 3B for the Dodgers this season. Ramirez would bring some nice stability and production to the position that has been missing all season.

Of all the players that Ramirez could oust out of job, only Gordon and his SBs have any fantasy value. Gordon’s injury is really going to limit his playing time to the last month of the season.

Ramirez would be an upgrade to either position, but we are no longer looking at the 2007-2010 version of him. He isn’t putting up 0.300/0.400/0.500 values. He is now the older model that is producing 0.250/0.333/0.425 numbers. They are good, but not game changing. The rest of the team may see a small bump in their Runs and RBIs, but nothing real enough to really change any player’s value.

The Hanley Ramirez trade looks on the surface to be fairly significant, but its fantasy implications are small. The only possible change may be a few more runs scored by the Dodgers.