White Sox player review: Alexei Ramirez

October 14, 3:10 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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Ramirez was a question mark in Spring Training.

The player:

Alexei Ramirez

Position: Second base

Vital statistics
Batting average: .290
OBP: .317
SLG: .475
OPS: .792
Home runs: 21
RBI: 77
Runs: 65
BB/K: 18/61
SB/CS: 13/9

Coming into the season, nobody really knew what to expect from Alexei Ramirez. Signed to just a four-year, $4.75 million contract with a $500,000 signing bonus, Ramirez was viewed as a low-risk, high-reward player heading into spring training. Nobody really expected the 26-year-old Ramirez to successfully assimilate to the major leagues in 2008, as it was his first year playing professional baseball in America.

Before the season began, the expectation was that Ramirez would begin the season in Double-A Birmingham or Triple-A Charlotte to get some much-needed seasoning.

However, when March rolled around, Ramirez showed off the incredible talent that he has by going 20/62 and flashing his blazing speed on the basepaths and athletic ability in the field. Of those 20 hits, eight of them were extra-base hits.

Like Carlos Quentin, Ramirez played himself on to the 2008 White Sox in spring training. There was no way Ramirez was going to be sent down to Triple-A after the all-around ability he showed off in March.

However, after just a week in the majors, it looked like Ramirez should have been sent down after all. After starting the first two games of the year and looking overmatched (albeit, by CC Sabathia and Fausto Carmona), Ramirez took a seat on the bench for the third game of the year. Nick Swisher moved to centerfield, where Ramirez played for the first two games, while Quentin garnered the starting left field spot. Quentin took off and carried the offense through April and May, and Ramirez sat on the bench.

Ramirez saw spotty playing time in April, only getting 29 at-bats. He collected just four hits in those at-bats, and only one of them was an extra-base hit.

This sporadic poor play continued into May, and it looked like there was no end in sight. It appeared that Ramirez was destined to sit on the bench for the rest of 2008, a move that very well could have been detrimental to his development. However, on May 16, Ramirez got his break when Juan Uribe went down with a strained hamstring that landed the incumbent second baseman on the disabled list.

In Ramirez' first game as the starting second baseman, he nailed a two-run home run—the first of his career—that broke a scoreless tie in the top of the seventh off San Francisco's Jonathan Sanchez. The White Sox went on to win the game 2-0, and Ramirez went on to earn his spot as the starting second baseman. He picked up hits in his first four games as the starting second baseman, including back-to-back multi-hit games May 18 against the Giants and May 20 against the Indians.

When Uribe returned from the disabled list, Ozzie Guillen stuck with Ramirez at second. That paid off in June, as Ramirez took off by hitting .355 with a .381 OBP, three home runs, and 17 RBI. Ramirez continued to get better and better through July and August before his batting average and OBP tailed off  in September, but his power numbers continued to improve. Ramirez hit six home runs in both August and September, including his memorable go-ahead grand slam against the Tigers that propelled the White Sox to a one-game playoff with the Twins and set the major-league record for most grand slams by a rookie at four.

For a rookie who never had played in the majors and saw more time on the bench than on the field in the first month and a half of the season, it's safe to say that Ramirez had a very, very good season.

His line drive rate/BABIP rate (.166 to .296) shows that he was just slightly lucky this year, but a dropoff in production isn't something to be too concerned about next year. Ramirez showed time and time again through 2008 that he was able to adjust to major-league pitching. The book on Ramirez was to throw him nothing by breaking balls, and Ramirez responded by adjusting to that to stay afloat. If you think it's easy to adjust to major-league pitching as a rookie who never has played in America before, just ask Kosuke Fukudome, who fell off the map once pitchers started throwing him a steady diet of curveballs.

Ramirez drew a lot of comparisions to a young Alfonso Soriano this year. Soriano hit just 18 home runs in his first full season in the majors and had an OBP that year of .304 before taking off the next year to hit 39 home runs and raise his OBP to .332. Both Ramirez and Soriano are lanky, powerful hitters who are extremely aggressive at the plate, but it's far too early to start comparing Ramirez to an established player the calibur of Soriano.

Defensively, however, there may be a comparison. Both Soriano and Ramirez possess extraordinary athletic ability, but neither have really translated it into great defense. All the defensive metrics show that Ramirez was a below-average defensive player, and many scouts noted that he was not as great of a defensive second baseman as people perceived.

However, personally, I'm withholding judgment on Ramirez until I see him play his natural position full-time in 2009, when he is expected to take over as the starting shortstop for the White Sox. It could not have been easy for Ramirez to try to adapt to not only a new country and style of baseball, but a new position when he came over from Cuba last year. Now that Ramirez has settled in and will get to play his natural position, it won't surprise me if his defense greatly improves in 2009.

There certainly are things Ramirez needs to work on—most notably, his walk/strikeout ratio (which was 0.30 in 2008), but on the whole, Ramirez far exceeded expectations in 2008. He was one of the players on the White Sox who you would stop whatever you were doing and watch when he was hitting. He put up some impressive numbers for a first-year player from Cuba, and he very well may improve off them in the next few years.

For what the White Sox are paying him—just over $1 million a year—Ramirez was overall a great success.

Also, I want to end this article with a tribute to one of my friends, Jordan Moore-Fields. Jordan tragically died in a car accident Sunday evening and was only 19. Jordan always had a smile on his face and brightened the day of everyone around him. He will be sorely missed by everyone, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. Rest in peace, JMF.