Jose Ramirez, a First Spring Homer and Revisiting What Eventually Went Right in a Season That Seemed So Wrong

About halfway through the 2019 campaign, getting out of the Jose Ramirez prediction business seemed more productive than most of his plate appearances.

Simply, it became far easier to stop trying to project a turnaround than make hopeful forecasts about if and when his slump would end -- though that would have been helpful to realize before purchasing a crystal ball on Amazon.

But, spoiler alert, Ramirez’s bat would eventually wake after slumbering through a period that extended back into August of 2018.

The switch-hitter slashed .326/.363/.747 with 18 homers in his final 47 games of 2019. That stretch (sort of) arbitrarily started on July 4 and was slowed and eventually stopped, despite his best efforts, only by the fractured hamate bone that swallowed his last week of August and nearly all of September.

-First 82 games of 2019: 21 extra-base hits, .629 OPS

-Last 47 games of 2019: 38 extra-base hits, 1.110 OPS

He even launched his first homer of the spring against the Diamondbacks on Sunday afternoon, giving us the perfect time to re-examine a hitter projected by every system worth noting to remain a star in 2020 despite an odd 2019 season.

So, all good, right? The real Ramirez finally stood up?

Well, he certainly looked poised to help the Indians stay alive in the second-half playoff race. But his injury not only took him off the grid for a team looking to climb out of the early hole they’d dug, it also stole the sort of sample size that would help decide if he was truly back to being an MVP caliber player.

Believing that the Ramirez who only existed on milk cartons for much of 2019 has returned is the answer that helps the Indians sleep at night. But what fun is waiting for an answer when there's data to sift through and the games still don't count?

A plethora of theories on why Ramirez went from one of the game’s best hitters to one of its worst filled the near calendar year of confusion.

There was a drop in power.

He started to see fewer fastballs.

Even more confounding, he also stopped crushing heaters like one of the game’s top four-seam hunters, even when he started to see more of them again last year.

Manager Terry Francona felt Ramirez was just pulling too many pitches into foul territory (Ramirez did have a slightly higher foul-per-swing rate against fastballs prior to July, per Brooks Baseball). Some fans felt Ramirez was pulling the ball too frequently all together, though, the data suggested the switch-hitter wasn’t pulling the ball enough.

If there was a hypothesis to be made, there was probably a stat to back that thought. That’s likely because the scuffles weren’t tied to just one roadblock.

So, perhaps a good place to start is at the most simplistic element of hitting -- hitting the ball consistently hard. Ramirez has never been one to wow anyone with exit velocity, but if there were any distinct differences between the two versions of the switch-hitter, we know that'd be a good place to begin, as the strikeouts and walks weren't so drastically off from career norms that it became a massive concern.

Interestingly, Ramirez actually finished with a higher hard-hit rate (the percentage of balls hit 95 mph or harder, per Statcast) than at any point of his career. But how he got there is just as vital as the season total, and it certainly tells an interesting story.

Oh. Well then.

Yes, there's more to hitting than just hitting the ball consistently hard (and September lacks a big sample). But someone's stick certainly sparked to life in July, right when his numbers started to climb. And if you'd like to consume that in a different way, look at how the hard-hit rate compares to his rolling wOBA (weighted on-base average).

It's not a perfect overlay, but close enough that we could probably just wrap it up here and have a somewhat fulfilling conclusion. That said, we know that's more of a symptom than the cause, and what's stopping us from digging deeper?

It wasn't just that Ramirez failed to hit the ball as hard over the first three months, it also mattered where and how he was hitting them. After all, the Tribe infielder has always been more about maximizing the balls he hits than crushing 440-foot monsters.

If we focus just on that hard contact, we see that Ramirez slugged .789 on balls with an exit velocity of 95 or more prior to July and 1.739 from July to the end of the season. That also coincided with 21.1 percent of that contact being pulled fly balls after July 1 as opposed to 11.7 percent before the start of that month.

Pulling the ball in the air can be good. Pulling the ball in the air when it's struck 95 mph or harder is even better. And think of it this way, would you rather be shooting those rockets toward a wall that is closer? Or would you rather those fly balls make their way toward center or the opposite field, where it might be harder to get them over the fielder's head or to clear the fence?

Here's a look at that distribution as a left-handed hitter.

Now, here is the same concept from the right side.

The differences in his spray chart are more pronounced from the left side, but we can certainly see Ramirez wasn't just hitting the ball consistently harder after July 1, the contact was a little better optimized for his hitting style -- a good blend.

Overall, he pulled 55.8 percent of his hard contact in the first three months. He pulled 70.4 percent of it from July to the end of his campaign. That also happened alongside Ramirez swinging at inside pitches a bit more frequently again, which, as a left-handed hitter, makes a lot of sense given his slugging by zone since the start of 2018.

But, again, this probably goes even deeper, so why stop here?

We've covered two big parts of hitting -- how hard it's hit and where it goes -- but we also care about the launch angle off the bat, as it could help decide between a laser into the seats or an easy pop out to the right fielder.

To that point, Ramirez's launch angle finished slightly higher than where it was in 2018. But average launch angle can be a bit deceiving if you don't examine it closely.

After all, a hitter that consistently maximizes his launch to collect extra base hits could carry the same average as a hitter that frequently hits pop ups and grounders, and we know those two hitters won't enjoy the same production.

And launch angle isn't a one size fits all exercise. Someone that consistently crushes pitches at a high rate might want an elevated launch angle, while a batter that doesn't hit the ball with the same force might want a slightly lower one to maximize line drives and stay away from lazy fly balls.

Here is how Ramirez's launch angle breaks down over the two stretches.

The Ramirez from the first three months of the season wasn't just failing to hit the ball as hard as late-season Ramirez, he was also hitting far fewer balls within the "sweet spot" of launch angle, the balls struck between eight and 32 degrees, per Statcast.

When used in concert with hard-hit rate, balls hit 95 mph or harder and between eight and 32 degrees of launch angle last year resulted in a .721 average and 1.715 slugging percentage. When hitters pulled that sort of contact, it generated an .826 average and 2.053 slugging percentage.

Yeah. Do that.

Unfortunately for slumping Ramirez, he wasn't able to match surging Ramirez in that category. And when paired with fewer hard-hit balls, the higher launch angle might help explain why he averaged 364 feet on fly balls prior to July 1 and 393 feet on fly balls from July 1 to the end of 2019.

-Sweet spot on hard-hit balls from March-June: 42.9% (1.156 slugging)

-Sweet spot on hard-hit balls from July-Sept: 53.5% (2.222 slugging)

Simply, late-season Ramirez was just driving pitches far better later in the year, and even the pitches that were hit hard before July just weren't doing as much damage as the ones over his end-of-season hot stretch.

This all seems to pass the smell test.

And the fact that he eventually proved capable of hitting the ball consistently harder down the stretch means his talent didn't just evaporate, he had just drifted away from some of the optimizations that had made him an elite-level player. He was even back to creaming heaters over the final three months, hitting .321 with a .901 slugging percentage against them starting in July.

But we're still left to wonder why. Perhaps the greatest clue was provided by his agent last season, who suggested on Twitter last year that Ramirez had been potentially overcompensating for an increase of infield shifts.

While he did see an increase in shift rate from 2018 (53 percent as left-handed hitter) to 2019 (72.1 percent as left-handed hitter), if attempting to beat it takes away from what makes you special, it's probably not worth shying away from pulled contact.

For example: Ramirez managed to generate a higher batting average on grounders in 2019 (.228) than 2018 (.191) as a left-handed hitter. But if that approach comes at the expense of the line drives and fly balls that turn into damaging extra-base hits, are the few extra singles created from avoiding the infielders truly worth it?

It's difficult to say definitively if a change in mentality helped. But if Ramirez, somewhere around July, truly did say, forget this noise, and stopped caring about where the fielders stood, it seems like as good of a theory as any.

Conceivably, he got back to looking to yank pitches with authority as opposed to positioning his swing to hit it where they weren't. After all, the only they beyond the outfield wall is fans, and their catches don't count.

Now, will that mentality carry into 2020?

There's no way to know until we know, nor could we possibly touch on every detail that might have had some impact on his infamous slump.

But seeing that a player is still capable of performing at an elite level, particularly as the last impression, so long as they maintain the process that separates them from the rest of baseball offers more meaningful hope than a crystal ball ever could.