Let's talk Hanley

I've said a couple times in other threads that letting Hanley's 2019 option vest if he continues to be a replacement-level DH would be criminal mismanagement by the Sox, but I'm not sure they'll have somebody good enough to justify sitting him (and even then it would probably turn into a huge fiasco). I can't think of a comparable recent situation for precedent, though one probably exists.

With no offseason additions Hanley is likely at the top of your depth chart for both 1B and DH. I could see the Sox adding a LHH 1B/OF type to replace Moreland, meaning maybe against RHP you could sometimes play Holt at 3B and let Devers DH, or vice versa. But I don't expect Hanley would just sit back and take it.

He's historically better in the second half, so I'm hoping for improvement like last year. His best months by OPS in his career are August and September/October per bbref.

His option requires 1,050 plate appearances this year and next to vest. He's at 389 plate appearances on the year with 54 games left and on pace for 584 PA if he were to play every game. He's probably going to finish around 550 PAs barring a major injury. I think it would be tough at his age to pencil in another 661 plate appearances over the next 1 1/3 year.

grimshaw said:

First the good:
a) He has been a good teammate
b) His triple slash on its surface isn't awful .250/.337/.443

And now everything else:
His OPS plus is 101 and wRC+ is 99 and he is being paid 22 million a year as a clean up hitter at a non-premium defensive position.

He has been replacement level this year and netted about half a win over his tenure and earned 5.6 million despite being paid 66 over his first three seasons.

Part of his lack of production has been due to being banged up. Except he hasn't been DL'd since August of his first season, so we have been stuck with a seemingly declining, well below average, who may or may not ever get to 100%. clean up hitter who needs to play every day.

While he is 7th in WAR among DH's, 4 of those players play the field a lot more than he can, freeing up DH for effective hitters and giving dog tired regulars a rest. He would be 25th among 27 qualified at first base. Were he able to play first base more often, maybe Pedey could have gotten much needed breaks to just DH 3 days a week and get Moreland out of the lineup when he was ice cold.

On top of this, his option will vest for 2019 with enough playing time.

For all the wrath directed at Mitch Moreland, I would argue the one player killing the team the most is Hanley given his spot in the lineup and his inflexible positioning.

Other thoughts?

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Are you making a case against Hanley in general, or against Hanley this season? Overall, I'd have hoped for better results from Hanley - but he did make a good faith try to transition to the OF and while not good, he was at least hitting with authority until he was injured. He followed 2015 with last year's very good 1B transition. I'm not sure what more you could have asked from him for either year.

In terms of this season, he's been decidedly Meh, while still hitting LHP well. Also, his slugging has been steadily increasing month by month. So there's hope for improvement. That said, it's really on Farrell to use the DH spot maximally, as it was on DD to construct the team in the first place.

Speaking of first place. . .

grimshaw said:

While he is 7th in WAR among DH's, 4 of those players play the field a lot more than he can. He would be 25th among 27 qualified at first base.

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If you're looking at fWAR, the way Fangraphs handles DH fWAR is very counter-intuitive, at least to me. It essentially imputes a fairly large negative adjustment to defense simply by filling the DH slot. So everyone non-hopeless at defensive will automatically have a higher fWAR based on how often they are on the field vs. being DH.

If I read their methodology correctly, I think a full-time DH who puts up 1.75 WAR on offensive would show up as a 0 fWAR player overall. So it's very, very hard to compare DH's to non-DH's.

grimshaw said:

I can't say I hated the signing at the time and indicated that he was a good teammate.

This is more about this year, but the contract has been a disaster and there really isn't an argument that it hasn't been.

I wasn't expecting miracles after Ortiz, but if his bat was close to last year, there were an awful lot of close games that could have been wins.

Most of his damage has been low leverage wRC+127. More hits in key spots have been badly needed.

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.898 OPS bases empty, .624 with men on, .558 RISP. .481 2 outs, RISP. .634 high leverage.

That pretty much says it all.

AB in DC said:

IIf I read their methodology correctly, I think a full-time DH who puts up 1.75 WAR on offensive would show up as a 0 fWAR player overall. So it's very, very hard to compare DH's to non-DH's.

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Yes - Fangraphs essentially treats a DH as if he's the worst possible defensive first baseman, and is playing in the field all the time.

Joey Votto is probably your closest non-DH comp last year to Ortiz - the difference in their component WAR is basically Ortiz's terrible baserunning - despite Votto being an absolute abortion defensively.

2 WAR, which is the typical "average regular" for a full time position player, is a DH with roughly 600 PA and a 130 wRC+, or .365-.370 wOBA. IE, to be "average" as a DH, you need to be one of the top 20 hitters or so in the league.

Interestingly - it is is only 30 PA at 1B - Hanley has been horrible offensively when playing in the field - .530 OPS. He is 4-27 with 1 2B and 1 HR. As a DH, he is at an even .800 OPS (350/450 split). And then he is 0-4 as a PH.

Pablo's contract was a disaster. Hanley is hot half season away from his contract being worth it as a whole thus far imo. Specifically speaking for this team, it's own set of surrounding circumstances, and factoring in the resource pool at our disposal.

IDK, to me you can't simply look at the money he's being paid while operating under an assumption that we would otherwise be the team out there winning the Logan Morrison lottery and saving $$$ in the process. Fairly disappointing first half aside, I'd still take my chances with Hanley in our attempt to win the division this year over quite a few of those cheaper options out there currently sporting better batting lines, and who might of qualified as a replacement option. Certainly over a Mitch Moreland.

nothumb said:

I've said a couple times in other threads that letting Hanley's 2019 option vest if he continues to be a replacement-level DH would be criminal mismanagement by the Sox, but I'm not sure they'll have somebody good enough to justify sitting him (and even then it would probably turn into a huge fiasco).

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Once Pedey comes back, I think the optimal approach would be to rotate Pedroia/Bogaerts/Devers/Nunez among 2b/ss/3b/dh giving each of them a brief respite from the infield. I don't think you can make the case for Hanley Ramirez starting at DH over any of those four. (Moreland at 1B is a completely different question, though.)

AB in DC said:

Once Pedey comes back, I think the optimal approach would be to rotate Pedroia/Bogaerts/Devers/Nunez among 2b/ss/3b/dh giving each of them a brief respite from the infield. I don't think you can make the case for Hanley Ramirez starting at DH over any of those four. (Moreland at 1B is a completely different question, though.)

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Maybe for the rest of this year, but I don't think they'll even consider trying to resign Nunez for 2018.

grimshaw said:

...I wasn't expecting miracles after Ortiz, but if Hanley's bat was close his 2016, there were an awful lot of close games that could have been wins.

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Red Sox losses (L) by number of runs (R) for their 49 losses thus far this season.
R - L
-----
1 - 12
2 - 11
3 - 11
4 - 3
5 - 6
6 - 2
7 - 1
8 - 2
9 - 1

Contrast that Ramirez's numbers in 2015 when he had the second best RBI total in his career. In 83 of his 147 games he did not get an RBI; in another 39 games he only got one RBI. That represents 82.99% of his games. It's down to 12 games with two RBI, 3 with 8, 4 with 3, zero with 5 and 2 with 6. It's a flip-a-coin thing. You flip a series of coins enough times and you will get some nice outcomes but overall the law of large numbers will get you. (Incidentally, he had the same percentage of not scoring any runs in a game that year.)

tims4wins said:

.898 OPS bases empty, .624 with men on, .558 RISP. .481 2 outs, RISP. .634 high leverage.

That pretty much says it all.

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Its interesting (to me anyway) that b-ref's high leverage is .634. Yet he's .782 late and close; 865 in tie games, similar in 1 and 2 run games. other than that shitty 2outsRISP, the individual "clutch" #s dont look bad.

A Hanley who knows the team is not playing him enough to vest his 2019 contract (regardless of how he's actually performing), will not be added value to the clubhouse.

How much of his '18 salary would the RS need to subsidize to move him? It would have to be an AL team with a DH opening and 1B time. I see two : TEX and HOU could afford him. And TEX has Choo.

joe dokes said:

Its interesting (to me anyway) that b-ref's high leverage is .634. Yet he's .782 late and close; 865 in tie games, similar in 1 and 2 run games. other than that shitty 2outsRISP, the individual "clutch" #s dont look bad.

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It's almost like reducing the sample size enough creates completely random results!

shaggydog2000 said:

It's almost like reducing the sample size enough creates completely random results!

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Serious question....is it the "hi-lev" size that's too small, or my breakdown. I know the things I pointed out are all small, but my only question was the math -- how do those non shitty numbers add up to 1 shitty number?

gryoung said:

A Hanley who knows the team is not playing him enough to vest his 2019 contract (regardless of how he's actually performing), will not be added value to the clubhouse.

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He's on pace for 583 PAs this year, leaving him needing just 467 next year for it to vest. He's going to need to get hurt and be off the field for a significant amount of time for him to come up short.

Could they just DFA him or is there anything in the CBA about that and options?

When? Before the option vests? Before the season? It would reflect pretty poorly on them if hey let him play 3/4 and then cut him to avoid the option vesting. And it'd be dumb to cut him before the season. He's overpaid, but it's not Pablo level bad that they should just eat it. It sucks because if the rest of the lineup was performing, they could conceivably start giving him off days, maybe PH, in the guise of getting him healthy for the playoffs. As it is, they need him in the lineup since there's no better option. He will be off the books either way before Sale or the kids need new contracts and that's all that really matters. They only have $123M committed to AAV for next season, if they need to get a bat they can, even after arbitration on the kids. Other than a couple bullpen arms they really won't be shopping for much and extensions for the Bs should probably wait another year anyway for the tax considerations. They'll have enough money to go after Hosmer or Duda if they want, or LoMo if they think he's legit finally figured it out.

joe dokes said:

Serious question....is it the "hi-lev" size that's too small, or my breakdown. I know the things I pointed out are all small, but my only question was the math -- how do those non shitty numbers add up to 1 shitty number?

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I don't think he was criticizing your math at all, but rather pointing out some "artifacts" of statistics that emerge that can give us clues as how probative the numbers are.

Here, sorta by definition, breaking stats out into increasingly narrow categories which in turn reduces sample sizes which increases the expected possible variation in outcomes, which is a valid alternative explanation for the observed phenomenon here, yeah?

In that vein, the numbers and what they do and do not tell us about statistical analysis are pretty cool--thanks for compiling them. I think shags is just a big nerd who expects everyone to get his nerd math jokes. nerd.

grimshaw said:

His OPS plus is 101 and wRC+ is 99 and he is being paid 22 million a year as a clean up hitter at a non-premium defensive position.

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He's basically in the middle-of-the-pack among the regular DHs. Among likely playoff teams, his offense is better than Beltran (Hou), even with Holliday (NYY), and worse than Encarnacion (CLE). Not exactly worth $22 million but he's not killing the team.

joe dokes said:

Serious question....is it the "hi-lev" size that's too small, or my breakdown. I know the things I pointed out are all small, but my only question was the math -- how do those non shitty numbers add up to 1 shitty number?

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Well, look at it this way, it takes around 500 AB for OPS to stabilize, and that is still best applied if those AB are representative of his future opportunities. If a player is injured for a significant stretch, the at-bats for that time period would not be a very good predictor of future at-bats for a healthy version of that player. If he faces nobody but Chris Sale 500 times, that would not be representative of his future performance against the league in general. As you make the sample size smaller than 500, the error associated gets larger and large. Maybe at 500 at bats the error on OPS is +/- .050. At 100 AB that could be +/-.250 or more. I don't have the numbers to analyze that and give you hard numbers on it. So a guy who is average (.750 OPS) could look like an elite hitter (1.000) or a bench scrub (.500) in a sample that size. It's not predictive and has no real value. It measures what happened, but not what a hitter's true ability is.

Hanley has 184 plate appearances in Low Leverage situations and an .837 OPS.
He has 173 plate appearances in Medium Leverage situations with an .777 OPS. That is really close for that small of a sample size. He's got a higher line drive and fly ball % in medium leverage, and a higher hard hit %. But his BABIP is lower. The contact is better, but the randomness of the results is slightly worse. Does that sound like a choke artist?
He has 37 plate appearances in High Leverage situations. That is how many plate appearances Rafael Devers has total. Do you think Devers is a 1.236 OPS hitter? Or that Hanley's true level of talent in high lev situations is a .464 OPS?

In general, my snark to your post was that you are comparing a few different numbers that all have really small sample sizes. As a result, they're pretty much all over the place. Which they should be. They're basically a random number generator. I would think those numbers have some meaning over an entire career for a guy who played 10+ years, but over half or 2/3 of a season? No way are they indicative of actual ability.

shaggydog2000 said:

In general, my snark to your post was that you are comparing a few different numbers that all have really small sample sizes. As a result, they're pretty much all over the place. Which they should be. They're basically a random number generator. I would think those numbers have some meaning over an entire career for a guy who played 10+ years, but over half or 2/3 of a season? No way are they indicative of actual ability.

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That's what I thought, but didn;t express. Essentiallly, they are ALL small sample sizes; they don't add up because they aren't real numbers.

joe dokes said:

That's what I thought, but didn;t express. Essentiallly, they are ALL small sample sizes; they don't add up because they aren't real numbers.

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I get what you're saying, the numbers aren't meaningful. But in another way, the numbers are real, the events did happen. They're just not likely to tell us much about what a player's real ability is or what he might do in the future is all. That is why I would be cool with someone say a play was "clutch", but not saying a player was definitely "clutch" after a few "clutch" plays.

grimshaw said:

If you mean "earns" the contract bottom line as in breaking even, then I don't think he can possibly do that. He would need to be a 4-5 win player in each of the next two years which just isn't going to happen at the position he will be playing. If you mean, he goes nuts the last two months and is a playoff series MVP, then that's a different argument. But the race wouldn't be as tight in the first place if he was last year's Hanley so he has a whole lot of ground to make up.

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I meant worth it as in until they start handing out trophies at the end of the year for cost efficiency, Hanley doesn't necessarily have to meet some WAR math calculation # or have been a Fangraphs favorite to go down as a solid overall contract for the Boston Red Sox imo. Generally speaking, overpaying for adequate level production close to what he gave us in 2016 isn't what's going to sink a $200m baseball team. If he finishes this year similar to last, 2 out of 3 with the first being lost cause anyway puts him on pace to be a free agency win for us in my book.

Again, I just have a harder time then some seeing a current reality atm where this trying to win lineup is ultimately better off without his upside + the extra money atm, and am going to give him the next 2 months before I start writing off that upside's potential usefulness towards the current roster. Which granted, if he ends the year not improving on that .777ops will probably happen.

shaggydog2000 said:

I get what you're saying, the numbers aren't meaningful. But in another way, the numbers are real, the events did happen. They're just not likely to tell us much about what a player's real ability is or what he might do in the future is all. That is why I would be cool with someone say a play was "clutch", but not saying a player was definitely "clutch" after a few "clutch" plays.

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Which brings is back to where I started. It didn't seem as though the component parts of "high leverage" added up to "he's been shitty," even though the overall looked pretty bad. I, too, have no problem if someone said that "player x has really sucked in the clutch so far this season." I was just finding what I thought were some mixed numbers on Hanley's 2017 so far.

Hanley might need a DL stint

“@TimBritton: Left oblique soreness for Ramirez.”

“@TimBritton: Ramirez said both sides hurt. Asked if it’s a DL situation, he said he didn’t know.”
“@alexspeier: Hanley Ramirez felt discomfort in his left oblique before the game. In game, a swing left him with right oblique pain.”

A bit more comfortable about it this week than last week, with the resurrection of Mitchy Two Bags. Good time to rest Hanley.

Trainer Stan Conte (or maybe he has his own company called Conte Injury Analytics) and others did a study on non-season-ending oblique injuries in MLB and MiLB over 5 seasons. Looks like the population was 996 total oblique injuries over 5 years 2011-2015, with an average MLB days missed of 23 days. Study makes interesting reading, and is a PDF you can download online from here.
https://foreonline.org/wp-content/.../11/Conte-Oblique-Injuries-2016-Update-V2.pdf

Edit: Also covered by mlb.com this past April, though the writer asserted that Conte's study showed 27 days recovery for hitters, and more for pitchers. Unclear why the inconsistency in recovery times. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/226211408/oblique-strains-more-common-in-baseball/

Snodgrass'Muff said:

He's on pace for 583 PAs this year, leaving him needing just 467 next year for it to vest. He's going to need to get hurt and be off the field for a significant amount of time for him to come up short.

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If his dl stint limits him to less than 500, I imagine it shouldn't be that hard to find some time off for him next year. I really hope they dont trigger that option

sean1562 said:

If his dl stint limits him to less than 500, I imagine it shouldn't be that hard to find some time off for him next year. I really hope they dont trigger that option

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He is at 398 PAs after today's game.

I thought he looked odd in one of his later at bats last night.

sean1562 said:

If his dl stint limits him to less than 500, I imagine it shouldn't be that hard to find some time off for him next year. I really hope they dont trigger that option

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+1. He seems to have been a great teammate/spokesman for the team and didn't say one unkind word towards mgmt about the 'Pablo DFA' situation. Overall an 'A' for attitude on several different fronts. He seems realistic about the situation and if the Sox add some LHH in the off-season that needs DH time, hopefully, it won't be a problem. Obviously, this line up lacks some slugging, and DH/1B is the one place where we can ADD to it next year - every other position on this team looks filled for next 3-4 seasons (X - 2 years).

AB in DC said:

He's basically in the middle-of-the-pack among the regular DHs. Among likely playoff teams, his offense is better than Beltran (Hou), even with Holliday (NYY), and worse than Encarnacion (CLE). Not exactly worth $22 million but he's not killing the team.

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Then again, were he not so overpaid, we might have Encarnacion at DH.

joe dokes said:

I thought he looked odd in one of his later at bats last night.

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Can you define "odd"?

barbed wire Bob said:

Can you define "odd"?

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Somewhere in the game thread, I noted that he dropped his bat on a swing or foul ball and that he reacted as though his arms had popped out of their sockets. It was later in the game, but I don't think it was his last AB.

joe dokes said:

Somewhere in the game thread, I noted that he dropped his bat on a swing or foul ball and that he reacted as though his arms had popped out of their sockets. It was later in the game, but I don't think it was his last AB.

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This is from Rotoworld.

Hanley Ramirez was removed from Friday's game against the White Sox due to left oblique soreness.
It's unclear at the moment how much time Ramirez may miss with the injury. It did set the stage for Friday's dramatics though, as the man that replaced him, Mitch Moreland, wound up clubbing a walk-off home run to send the Red Sox home as winners in the 11th inning. Aug 4 - 11:13 PM
Source: Tim Britton on Twitter

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http://www.rotoworld.com/recent/mlb/893/hanley-ramirez

I'm wondering if what you saw was Hanley's reaction to an injury to the oblique.

Edit: I didn't see that soxhop411 already posted the news.

With the news that Pedroia will rejoin the team in Tampa Bay and be activated for Tuesday's game, I thought of Hanley and his injury. Will we see him back in TB at all? No 1B for Hanley (both TB starters are RHP), but maybe at DH?

As of yesterday, he was receiving treatment and was not expected to go on the DL. http://www.masslive.com/redsox/index.ssf/2017/08/hanley_ramirez_boston_red_sox_22.html

Hanley is basically Panda-light. Enjoy the vesting.
However, the Giants have Panda batting fifth. How'd they fix him?

MuzzyField said:

Hanley is basically Panda-light. Enjoy the vesting.
However, the Giants have Panda batting fifth. How'd they fix him?

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Their 6-7-8 hitters are Brandon Crawford (.641 OPS) and 2 rookies. Sandoval is at .633 OPS so it's a push. "Fixed" might be a tad optimistic at this point.

Panda with a double!

Yup - I just put the reverse jinx on him!

MuzzyField said:

Hanley is basically Panda-light. Enjoy the vesting.
However, the Giants have Panda batting fifth. How'd they fix him?

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By being 44-69. http://www.espn.com/mlb/team/_/name/sf/san-francisco-giants

If Hanley doesn't go on the DL today with Pedroia returning then there will have to be a tough roster decision made, as I think the only guy with options on the team (other than a starter) is Devers, assuming Pedroia returns to 2B and Nunez goes to 3B. Or it may be the end of the line for Abad or Boyer, unless they give up on Holt.

Lose Remerswaal said:

If Hanley doesn't go on the DL today with Pedroia returning then there will have to be a tough roster decision made, as I think the only guy with options on the team (other than a starter) is Devers, assuming Pedroia returns to 2B and Nunez goes to 3B. Or it may be the end of the line for Abad or Boyer, unless they give up on Holt.

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They've been running with a short bench for a week...essentially a 2-man bench with first Leon then Hanley banged up. If it isn't a Hanley DL stint, they have to send a pitcher down in exchange for Pedroia.