San Diego Padres Alexei Ramirez: Fantasy Impact

If you were to ask fans or anyone in the organization, the San Diego Padres would tell you that they had one huge glaring hole on their team: their shortstop. Last season, they trotted out names that most of us would not even know if they walked in the room, so it was clear that they had to upgrade the position this offseason.

Instead of making a long term investment, in lets say an Ian Desmond, they have opted to ago the shorter term route by inking Alexei Ramirez to a one year deal. He has been a staple in the White Sox lineup since he debuted in 2008 and has been a solid fantasy producer his whole career.

From a fantasy perspective, he has been a common target for those of us who miss out on the better shortstops in the draft and wait to snag him in the mid rounds. Last season though, his statline took a step back as he his power and speed dipped. He finished the 2015 season with a .249/10 HR/62 RBI/17 SB/.642 OPS line, showing clear drops in his average and OPS.

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Let us first get the red flags out of the way. His OPS was its lowest for his career and his hit total took a big hit dropping by 25 from 2014. While his 17 steals are respectable, it is a certainly a downer not seeing Ramirez not snag his usual 20 SB every season.

For me, Ramirez’s struggles last season stems from the fact that he made too much contact with pitches out of the zone. Clearly there are “bad ball” hitters in baseball, but for Ramirez and his more line drive approach, he has to stop chasing pitches and subsequently making weaker contact with pitches not in the zone.

When a player posts a career worse stat like he did with his average, it is important to see if there are any stat outliers that may be the cause. Last season, his O-Contact %( contact rate on pitches outside of the strikezone) was 76.5%. That alone was a career high and a 9.5% increase from his solid 2014 season!

Clearly that kind of spike can cause ones batting average to drop and lead us to understand why his power dipped. After looking at all his peripherals that is one stat that pops out and also had an impact on why he had a career low BABIP of .264, a near 30 point drop form 2014.

While he is certainly on the downswing of his career, there is still enough value where Ramirez should be still be draftable. By not getting on base as much as he loses chances to steal bags, which should be alleviated with his BABIP climbing back towards the league average mark and his walks have remained steady.

While he has enjoyed the perks of hitting U.S. Cellular Park, he still has the ability to sneak a couple out every now and then. Owners should be aware too that Ramirez was killed by a terrible first half of the season posting a, .224/2 HR/27 RBI/10 SB line. But, he rebounded nicely during the second half to post a line that more aligns with his career norms, .277/8 HR/35 RBI/7 SB line.

Next: Christian Yelich: Ready to Explode in 2016?

With all that said, I do not think that Ramirez should be a high value target in 2016, but rather a nice MI option latter in drafts as he still has enough fantasy value to warrant consideration at a weak offensive position. The move to Petco caps his power to just around 10 homers, and he needs to be to bat towards the top of the order in order to build his counting stats. But, I still believe that there is meat on the bone here thanks to nearly all of his other peripherals remaining close to his career numbers.

2016 Early Projections: .270/10 HR/60 RBI/20 SB/.700 OPS

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