12 March 2008
This just in: Horacio Ramirez has been
released by the Seattle Mariners. J.C. Bradbury, whom I've quoted before,
thinks we should get him back, under what I'll call the WHIL principle: Well, He
IS a Lefty. (If you're keeping track, WHIL motivated both the Aybar/Fontaine trade and the Ascanio trade.)
So, um, how bad is Horacio these days? I like quoting career stats over year-to-year stats, because I think career stats give a better picture of the true talent of the player in question than the results in a given year, which are subject to all sorts of normal fluctuations. But Horacio's all over the map. Here's his ERA+ in his 5 seasons: 107, 181, 91, 99, 61. Even taking into account his catastrophic 2007, his career ERA+ is 93, which honestly isn't that far off from league-average. (Jeff Weaver, career ERA+? 93.)
And his splits look even more promising. Against lefties, he has allowed a career line of .261/.322/.383. But last year, that ballooned to .330/.391/.490. If he's the guy he used to be, he could certainly be capable of getting lefties out one at a time. If not, hey, at least we get to keep Rafael Soriano.
What do you guys think?
