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Post by bosox81 on Jun 12, 2013 8:50:57 GMT -5
I think this guy deserves some love. He just turned 21 and in A+ he has a triple slash of 259/354/425. But those numbers are brought down by a truly awful April (.555 OPS). He seems to be getting better and is en fuego the last ten days: (.433/.541/.900). Also the scouting report on this site says he's learning how to be selective at the plate. But he seems to have made huge strides on that beginning last year when he had 44 walks and this season his isoD is almost 100.
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Post by godot on Jun 12, 2013 9:41:22 GMT -5
Don't forget this was a kid who was primarily a soccer player and only recently has been concentrating on baseball. His play lately is encouraging, but wouldn't get excited about him yet.
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Post by sammo420 on Jun 12, 2013 9:53:21 GMT -5
Don't forget this was a kid who was primarily a soccer player and only recently has been concentrating on baseball. His play lately is encouraging, but wouldn't get excited about him yet. Pretty much this. You kind of throw out his month of April but then look only at his month of May which is the same time period? He's one of my sleepers for the reasons quoted above. To me he's the definition of raw and toolsy with high upside. He's a long ways away but I think there's a lot of potential there.
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Post by okin15 on Jun 12, 2013 12:15:53 GMT -5
To be fair, we're nearly halfway through June, including his hottest streak. It's always encouraging when a player steadily gets better. Let's see where the mean is when he regresses from his current torrid streak. I have no recollection of scouting on him, so would love to get eyes on him. player page for reference: soxprospects.com/players/ramos-henry.htm
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jun 12, 2013 12:59:40 GMT -5
Through April 16: 35 PA, .094/.147/.094, 0 XBH, 2 bb, 12 k, 2/3 SB/SBA (sat for two games, then a rainout...) Since April 20: 190 PA, .292/.392/.491, 7 2b, 2 3b, 7 hr, 26 bb, 32 k, 5/10 SB/SBA
Really liking the adjustments there. He had a similar adjustment period playing for Ponce in Puerto Rico this offseason - eventually had a .286/.349/.429 line, but he was just awful for the first half of Ponce's season and then got crazy hot.
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Post by elguapo on Jun 12, 2013 14:24:50 GMT -5
Seems like Ramos is in the process of leap-frogging KDLC & Jacobs. He's been way under the radar as a raw teenage draftee, which I think is fine as those guys need a few years to gel if they're going to make it. If he had gone to college he would have been eligible to be drafted this year.
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Post by geezergeek on May 7, 2014 17:38:23 GMT -5
He seems to be breaking out this year in Portland. Given that he did not start playing baseball full time until a few years ago what is his upside? He has the size and the body. Are we looking at a reserve outfielder or starter at the major league level.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 8, 2014 2:28:57 GMT -5
I was hoping this was the case, but he's done this before. He is, in fact, a massive tease.
2011 .221 / .245 / .336 (34 G, 139 PA), through July 3 .404 / .443 / .561 (14 G, 61 PA), July 4 to July 21 .163 / .226 / .244 (22 G, 93 PA), July 22 to August 18 .362 / .393 / .517 (15 G, 61 PA), August 20 to end
2012 .241 / .279 / .310 (14 G, 61 PA), through April 20 .318 / .362 / .545 (11 G, 47 PA), April 21 to May 7 .216 / .310 / .324 (27 G, 117 PA), May 8 to June 10 .326 / .417 / .517 (27 G, 104 PA), June 11 to July 17 (including .350 / .469 / 550, 12 G, 49 PA, June 14 to 29) .226 / .298 / .328 (39 G, 154 PA), July 19 to end
2013 .176 / .323 / .196 (16 G, 63 PA), through April 26 .375 / .394 / .563 (8 G, 34 PA), April 27 to May 5 .197 / .266 / .352 (21 G, 79 PA), May 7 to May 30 .325 / .398 / .568 (46 G, 197 PA), May 31 to July 20 (including .408 / .474 / .755, 15 G, 58 PA, June 5 to 21) .155 / .248 / .243 (26 G, 119 PA), July 21 to August 21 .279 / .319 / .488 (11 G, 48 PA), August 22 to end
2014 .230 / .266 / .262 (16 G, 65 PA), through April 24 .442 / .473 / .692 (13 G, 55 PA) since
It's not quite the best stretch of his career, but it is easily the best April / May stretch. So perhaps a little cause for optimism. But he needs to sustain something like it (as he did last year for 7 weeks), and, more importantly, he needs to avoid the prolonged brutal slumps.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 8, 2014 3:16:41 GMT -5
Very interesting. I hadn't realized that he was that streaky. I'd actually prefer that a 'raw' kid was streaky than consistent. If he was consistently mediocre, his ceiling would be mediocrity.
Based on what I've seen, I think the solution to reducing the magnitude of the valleys is going to be plate discipline and pitch recognition. He's pretty inexperienced and there's room for optimism there. On the other hand those skills aren't easy. Right now given his tool and skill sets, his future range is anywhere between AAA washout to all-star right fielder. Realistically the odds of the former are much higher than the latter.
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Post by elguapo on May 8, 2014 8:48:22 GMT -5
If you go looking for streaks, you will find them. The simple truth is that sometimes players run hot and cold. Peer at the numbers too closely and you'll get ink on your nose and go cross-eyed besides.
Ramos has shown improvement each year while being consistently age-advanced for his league and is the sort of young, relatively raw player I would think would take some time adjusting to AA. He's apparently making good contact, which is a great sign, but if I had to guess, he'll be back at Portland to begin 2015. His walk rate, for example, isn't keeping pace with his Salem results. He's Rule V eligible at the end of this year so he's potential trade bait or a 40-man add, depending.
(Only a pedant would object to Roman numerals!)
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Post by jimed14 on May 8, 2014 13:36:48 GMT -5
Is there a list of when guys are Rule 5 eligible? Or do you have to click on every prospect?
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Post by jmei on May 8, 2014 13:42:48 GMT -5
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 8, 2014 15:12:02 GMT -5
If you go looking for streaks, you will find them. The simple truth is that sometimes players run hot and cold. Peer at the numbers too closely and you'll get ink on your nose and go cross-eyed besides. I'm well aware of that. For the most part, his streaks jump up and shout, hey, I'm a streak! Red hot to ice cold overnight, or vice versa, with no grey areas in between. That's actually unusual, as is the severity of his splits. Now, in 2013, the two short hot streaks (8 and 11 games) may have been random; I included them for thoroughness. If I had had the time, I would have looked at SO%, BB%, HR/Contact, BABIP, etc., and I may well do that next. If you count hot versus cold days, year by year, he's making progress. (or, if those 8 and 11 game hot streaks last year were random, then the progress is ameliorating the depth of the slumps.) He still has great upside; you don't put up a 966 OPS line for 46 games without significant talent.
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Post by JackieWilsonsaid on May 8, 2014 16:01:54 GMT -5
Tonight is a judgement moment.
Sanchez is ranked ahead of Owens.
Let's see if Ramos and Betts can get. Him dirty early.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 9, 2014 4:05:56 GMT -5
Well, I've looked at his component rates, hot versus cold, and they form a consistent pattern across the 17 identified hot or cold steaks, but it's weird and counter-intuitive.
You'd think that commanding the strike zone (good, low K/W ratio) would be important to his hot streaks. In fact, since striking out less and walking more both contribute directly to TAv / EqA, that's almost unavoidable. But Ramos nearly pulls off the trick of making it irrelevant. There's only a mild and insignificant correlation between BB/(BB+SO) and TAv during a stretch. And in fact, there's a considerably stronger inverse correlation between his strike zone command and how hard he hits the ball, as measured by XBH/Contact or BABIP.
In fact, the single strongest correlation between any measure of success and any measure of strike zone behavior -- and it's very significant, p = .001 -- is between his total K and W, and his XBH/Contact. And it's inverse. The deeper he goes in counts, the less hard he hits the ball. And he does tend to improve his K/W ratio when he improves the total -- which is to say, being more patient increases his walk total more than it increases his strikeout total -- but it still results in weaker contact.
As a result, the single best correlate for TAv in a stretch is simply low K rate. BB rate is not only not significant after factoring in K rate, it's a little backwards, which is amazing given that a walk adds directly to TAv.
The one thing that commanding the zone helps him do is hit homers (p < .02), but his homers are relatively rare and not significantly correlated to either his XBH/C or his BABIP.
And so now I'm wondering ... he has success when he's aggressive. He's been told that, in theory, being more patient can get him even better pitches to hit. Has he been trying to do that, and whenever he does, he loses sense of what to swing at and what not to?
Or ... maybe he has success being aggressive because he sees more fastballs early in counts? After a while, pitchers start to adjust and begin doing that less, and perhaps that could lead to longer at bats. Then, once he's been slumping for weeks, the book on him changes, they start to challenge him, and he starts hitting fastballs early in counts again.
I'm not sure I buy either of those ideas.
Hmm ... if his pitch recognition simply comes and goes, when it's on, perhaps he's so good that he doesn't tend to go deep in counts. See ball, hit ball. When it's off, he becomes tentative, goes deeper in counts, his K and BB both go up, but because he isn't recognizing, he's not hitting the ball hard at all. That makes very good sense ... except for the premise. I don't know why general pitch recognition would come and go dramatically, and without much overall improvement from season to season (although perhaps, being continually promoted is what has counteracted any actual improvement).
Here are all his streaks, with TAv, K+W, and XBH/C.
TAv K+W XBC .203 .223 .083 .345 .197 .146 .174 .344 .067 .313 .295 .140
.213 .230 .089 .305 .213 .189 .231 .310 .101 .324 .301 .111 .220 .333 .084
.208 .419 .029 .323 .212 .154 .217 .266 .086 .326 .267 .147 .184 .304 .089 .272 .234 .229
.197 .328 .047 .387 .203 .170
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 9, 2014 4:46:39 GMT -5
Henry will be an interesting watch when he's struggling. From what I've seen (first time with MiLB.TV and he's been hot), he's pretty much always squaring up the ball no matter where it's pitched. The two home runs the other night came from both sides of the plate but the one from the right side was opposite field on a pitch on the outside half of the plate. (It wasn't a great pitch). I also want to observe more of him when the pitches are in the upper half. Usually, with hitters that don't have good bat speed, you can blow it by them high. I'm not sure if that's the case here.
ADD: If you notice, the K component of the pitch recognition ratio isn't as bad as the case usually is, it's that the BB component is low.
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Post by godot on May 9, 2014 6:25:20 GMT -5
Couple of things related to Ramos. I wonder if the "patience" and working the count approach, including waiting for your pitch, could be counterproductive for some hitters in that it curtails their natural aggressiveness ( see the ball, hit it) and puts them in a hole where they "think" too much. Ellsbury became a better hitter when he was prepared to swing at every pitch instead of taking and "waiting" for his pitch. Of course, this assumes a hitter has good pitch recognition and processing skills. As one baseball person I respect said, " sometimes the first pitch you get could be the best you get, so be prepared to swing". Likewise, don't "think (out louad) but let you muscle and processing skills lead and thus react quickly.
The other matter, Eric, are they any studies that provide any insight as to whether kids who played in other sports and turn to baseball in their middle to late teens make the transition into "good" ball payers. There is some learning theory ( and baseball people) that suggests you learn baseball skills such as pitch recognition, gauging and tracking hit balls at the ages where your muscle memory and processing skills are developing preteen), a prereflective or "sub conscious" process; the result is that these skills become "natural" and reflexive or see the ball and hit it. Yogi may have hit upon something.
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Post by jimed14 on May 9, 2014 12:14:53 GMT -5
Couple of things related to Ramos. I wonder if the "patience" and working the count approach, including waiting for your pitch, could be counterproductive for some hitters in that it curtails their natural aggressiveness ( see the ball, hit it) and puts them in a hole where they "think" too much. Ellsbury became a better hitter when he was prepared to swing at every pitch instead of taking and "waiting" for his pitch. Of course, this assumes a hitter has good pitch recognition and processing skills. As one baseball person I respect said, " sometimes the first pitch you get could be the best you get, so be prepared to swing". Likewise, don't "think (out louad) but let you muscle and processing skills lead and thus react quickly. The other matter, Eric, are they any studies that provide any insight as to whether kids who played in other sports and turn to baseball in their middle to late teens make the transition into "good" ball payers. There is some learning theory ( and baseball people) that suggests you learn baseball skills such as pitch recognition, gauging and tracking hit balls at the ages where your muscle memory and processing skills are developing preteen), a prereflective or "sub conscious" process; the result is that these skills become "natural" and reflexive or see the ball and hit it. Yogi may have hit upon something. It definitely screwed up WMB last year and seemed to be messing with Iglesias as well even with his ridiculous BABIP. They were hitting in 0-2 counts way too often.
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Post by James Dunne on May 9, 2014 17:07:21 GMT -5
There is probably a subset of players hurt by being patient rather than aggressive. Kirby Puckett, for one, swore up and down that trying to work deep counts consistently put him in a worse position to hit. But when you have Puckett's plate coverage, it doesn't much matter what the count is.
At issue here is the difference between patience as an approach and patience as a skill, and why when we (not all of us, of course) talk about a player needing to improve his approach at the plate we are often misguided. It's one thing to know before a pitch is delivered that you aren't going to swing at it. You and I can do that. It's quite another to be able to identify, in a split second, that a pitch is going to be a ball and then not swing at it. If you can't do the latter, then "changing your approach" generally won't make a lick of difference. I do think there is something to be gained from seeing one pitch before swinging. But trying to work walks isn't the object of patience. Walks are generally an offshoot of a player with plus pitch identification waiting to get his pitch to hit.
I understand I'm speaking in a lot of generalities here, but that's my take.
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Post by jimed14 on May 9, 2014 17:18:07 GMT -5
Working the count is something that won't work for guys who don't have a good approach. Having a good approach is basically working the pitcher to give you the exact pitch that you want to hit. I remember way too many times last year, WMB took the first two pitches and wound up 0-2 even if they were great pitches for him to hit. Probably because he was worried about seeing a certain number of pitches per at-bat. He seems to have corrected that somewhat this year.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 10, 2014 0:14:43 GMT -5
I was curious and went back and looked at all the AB's by Ramos in last night's game.
2 pitch hard groundout to second 1-0 count(batting left) 1st pitch hard linedrive single to left-left center (batting right) 1st pitch bouncy ball single through the SS hole (batting right) 6 pitch bouncy ball ground out to the pitcher. 3-2 count(batting left)
None of the strikes were looking and the only swing at a ball that appeared out of the zone was the linedrive single which might have been a bit high. Note that when there's a left handed batter up, the ump blocks the view of the plate. For reference, what I was looking for was to see how he handled high pitches but the linedrive single was the only high fastball he saw all night that was anywhere near the plate. I also missed most of tonight's game but I didn't see him get any high fastballs.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 10, 2014 3:10:09 GMT -5
Ellsbury became a better hitter when he was prepared to swing at every pitch instead of taking and "waiting" for his pitch. This literally is absolutely as backwards as it could possibly be. It's like saying Jim Rice didn't become a good hitter until his eyes went south on him in his 30's. Ellsbury, in his early days, was among the best hitters in the league when behind in the count and among the worst when ahead. He only waited or looked for his pitch in certain narrow well-defined circumstances, when getting on base seemed less important (e.g., Sox ahead, 2 outs, runners on). Otherwise he was a completely defensive, reactive hitter, for instance, leading the club in percentage of pitches down the middle swung at, second on the club at contact percentage on those pitches, and last in SA on them. He blossomed as a hitter when he started using his situationally limited approach all the time. I know of no such studies, but I think the selection bias involved would lead, essentially, to circular reasoning. If your thesis is correct, the inexperienced players who are drafted high and given a chance to succeed would be those that teams felt were so gifted that they could overcome the late start. Put another way, you could look at Bo Jackson and see him learning those baseball skills you cite, while playing in the majors. From that, you can conclude that a late start is no impediment to athletes like Bo Jackson.
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Post by godot on May 10, 2014 15:46:39 GMT -5
Eric, it was Ellsbury who said what I stated. Very sure, as it surprised me when I read it.
As regards to to the second matter. Bo played baseball in high school and excelled as this shows:.
Hardly a model student, Jackson showed his prowess in sports - plural. At McAdory High School in McCalla, Ala., Jackson won two state decathlon championships. As a senior, he ran for 1,173 yards on 108 carries (10.9 average) and scored 17 touchdowns. In baseball, his 20 homer -- in just 25 games -- tied the national high school record.
His talent caught the attention of the New York Yankees, who selected him in the second round of the June 1982 draft. But Jackson turned down their $250,000 offer to accept a football scholarship from Auburn.
He also did well playing baseball at Auburn. If he played and excelled in high school, the odds are he played before then, unless you can show otherwise. The Sox drafted Michael Colemen and Donnie Sadler but their main sport in high school was football and basketball respectively.
By the way it is not my thesis, but rather something that baseball scouts told me and a minor league owner explaining why KC's baseball academy ( set up Kaufman) did not work ( and hasn't been tried since). They took inner city kids who were good athletes but had limited and no baseball experience.
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Post by okin15 on May 12, 2014 13:54:48 GMT -5
Most things are better learned at a young age, but a part of that is hours practiced increase the earlier you start... we, practicing.
I think there is plenty that can be learned (physical or mental) as you age, but often the demands of being a grown up get in the way of pesky stuff like playing on a ball field. I can't imagine a study that really is able to control for that kind of stuff. The only real question for me is, can a guy get enough (intense, focused) reps and hours in before he peaks physically? This will have to do with dedication, opportunity, age begun, injuries, etc. Especially in a sport where you only get to practice your skills a fraction of the time you're actually playing, this could be pretty tough for someone who starts at a later age, but definitely possible for a gifted athlete and/or a player dedicated to practicing during BP/fielding drills, etc.
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Post by moonstone2 on May 12, 2014 14:44:38 GMT -5
Henry Ramos was part of the Baseball Prospectus Monday morning Ten Pack today with a nice paragraph written by our own Chris Mellon.
In short is Ramos someone to get excited about?
Not yet.
Is he an intriguing prospect and someone to keep an eye on?
Yes.
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