Boston Red Sox: Hanley Ramirez Selected AL Least Valuable
The Boston Red Sox have stumbled through the 2015 season. While the younger players led by Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts have shown a glimpse of a promising future for the Red Sox, the present day Boston baseball team is not in a good situation.
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The Red Sox made two major free agent additions last off season in Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. While they certainly are not the only ones to blame, both players had terrible seasons in 2015. Considering how much the Red Sox were counting on both Ramirez and Sandoval, their poor performance has been a huge negative for the team.
Jason Stark, Senior Baseball Writer for ESPN.com, put out his end-of-season MLB awards selections on Friday. With their ugly possible last place season nearly closed, I did not expect much mention of the Red Sox in this piece. To my surprise, a player on the team was actually featured for an award. Unfortunately, it was not exactly an award that you want to be associated with.
Stark named Ramirez the Least Valuable Player in the American League. To make matters worse, Sandoval was his third selection for the award. As you can imagine, no other members of the Red Sox were mentioned for any other award.
Here is what Stark had to say about his selection of Ramirez:
To say Ramirez was a disaster in left field would be such an understatement. I do not blame the Red Sox for the move. He was an elite offensive player, and transitioning to the outfield is fairly regular in baseball. Most players can handle a change from infield to outfield just find. With Ramirez’s well-rounded skill-set, there was little reason to believe his play wouldn’t be at least passable for left field.
Obviously, it wasn’t. He was terrible, and the Red Sox are now stuck with Ramirez, and nowhere to play him. He probably ends up handling first base next season, but hopefully the team is able to unload him on somebody looking to land a DH.
Articles like this one by Stark do not really mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but it is an interesting barometer to see where the franchise is sitting. Clearly, the Red Sox would have been better off just not being thought of at all. True or not, this organization is not highly though of on a national level at the moment.
Next: Five Players Red Sox Should Target in Free Agency