Hanley Ramirez says he’s not broken, and that he’s not so far from being himself as a hitter. He understands what’s happened since he returned from his shoulder injury – “Struggling,” he acknowledged – but suggested the root is mechanical.
“Not physical. Not at all,” said Ramirez. “Just gotta stay on top of the ball a little bit more. I’ll get back. I’ll keep working. I’ll get my swing back.”
The Red Sox certainly need him to do just that, or at least to come close to resembling the middle-of-the-order force who carried the lineup in April, and whose falloff in May has coincided with a form of futility (2.3 runs per game so far this month) not seen by the Sox since 1943. And chances are very good that, if April Hanley still resided in the middle of the Red Sox order, the outcome of Thursday’s 3-1 loss to the Rangers could have been very different.
Ramirez’s first major opportunity came in the fourth, with a runner on third and one out, at a time when the Sox trailed, 3-1. He dribbled a comebacker to Wandy Rodriguez – a ball that couldn’t have been hit much more weakly – that ended up resulting in Dustin Pedroia (running on contact) being thrown out at the plate. In the bottom of the ninth, with David Ortiz on second and Ramirez representing the tying run, he got a gift. He didn’t open it.
“Hanley gets a breaking ball that stays up in the middle of the plate and pops it up,” manager John Farrell said.
“I just missed. I just missed it. I got under it a little bit,” lamented Ramirez. “I’m feeling good. I just got under that ball a little.”
In some ways, the swing was one of the most promising Ramirez has taken since he returned to the lineup from his ill-fated crash into the grandstand wall at Fenway Park on May 4. The fact that he scraped clouds with a pop-up suggests that he made a form of contact that he’s rarely exhibited in his return to the Sox lineup.
Still, the reality is that the man who was tied for the major league lead in RBIs at the end of April has yet to drive in a run in May, and by virtually any measure, he’s been a distorted shadow of his early-season self.
When he was injured, he owned a .283 average, .340 OBP, and .609 slugging mark. He was walking once for every two strikeouts, with a 6.8 percent walk rate and 13.6 percent strikeout rate.
Since the injury, he’s hitting .216 with a .231 OBP and .275 slugging mark. He’s walked once (1.9 percent rate) and struck out nine times (17.3 percent rate). The shift in strikeout and walk numbers underscore the idea that his approach has had to change. Meanwhile, he’s making drastically weaker contact.
Prior to his injury, in at-bats measured by MLB’s StatCast (and compiled by BaseballSavant.com), Ramirez led the majors with an average velocity off the bat of 97.56 mph. Since his return, among the at-bats where his contact has been measured, he’s averaging 88.31 mph.
Prior to the injury, 33 of the 57 measured balls he put in play (58 percent) came off the bat at speeds of 100 mph or greater. Since the injury, that’s been the case on just 10 of 32 (31 percent) of the measured balls he’s put in play.
The before and after tells a story of a different hitter, to the point where hitting coach Chili Davis checked in with Ramirez about his shoulder Thursday.
“I’ve got to go on what he says,” said Davis. “I needed to know, too. I went and asked him. He said, ‘I feel fine.’”
Of course, part of Davis’ interest was based on his personal awareness of how much an injury to the left shoulder can impact a righthanded hitter. As a player with the Giants, injuries forced Davis to get a screw inserted into his left shoulder prior to the 1986 season. That year, a switch-hitter who excelled from both sides of the plate in his career was a force batting lefthanded (.302/.420/.450) and unable to contribute batting righthanded (.226/.267/.345).
“[The front shoulder is] very important – to be able to stay in there, to pull, [and to] stay on a pitch and extend out over the plate to drive the ball the other way,” said Davis. “For me, it was difficult to come back from it hitting righthanded because it was my extension arm when you make contact. For me, it bothered me to the point where it took a while. It took about a year for me to come back from it.
“If there’s pain there or any sort of fatigue there, I’m sure that it limits [Ramirez] from doing some of the things that he’s used to doing. But like I said, I asked him today and he said he’s fine,” Davis added. “I can’t really say that he’s hurting. I’m sure if he was, he would have said something.”
Of course, Ramirez and the Sox share a belief that the lineup is different with him in it than when he is unavailable. His presence, at least in theory, can alter plans of attack against those around him, particularly David Ortiz – which makes it all the more telling about Ramirez’s struggles that the Rangers intentionally walked Ortiz three times in the just-completed series to attack him.
“He understands his responsibility in the middle of that lineup. He needs to be in it,” said Davis. “I’m sure if he wasn’t feeling healthy enough, he would say something because then he’d realize he’d be hurting more than helping. But I think he believes, I know he believes, that by being in the lineup he can help us win some ballgames.”
Ramirez just hasn’t been able to perform for much of the last two weeks like someone capable of doing so on a consistent basis, and until he once again starts driving the ball with the same ferocity that he exhibited in the season’s first month, it will be difficult to ignore the suspicion that he’s damaged. Opposing teams certainly appear to be operating on that assumption. Either Ramirez is injured or he’s in a mess of a slump.
Either way, a Red Sox team that is desperate for one player to serve as an anchor – in a fashion that Ramirez did in April – is offensively adrift.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter@alexspeier.