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Q.  To come up with pitchers who are genuinely similar to Erasmo Ramirez, what would we want?  

A.  What skills has Erasmo demonstrated already, and what is his statistical profile?

• He keeps his walks low, based on mechanics in part.
• He can strike guys out, no doubts there, based on his killer change in part.
• He might or might not develop gopheritis; his fastball is deceptively short (90-92 visually compared to 92-95 on the gun)
• Right now his game is built on classical change-speed, as opposed to cutters, groundballs, etc.
• He throws with his right hand

You could argue about other stuff:  should you count his slider as a 3rd pitch, giving him a broad repertoire like Cliff Lee?  Is his sidearm delivery a defining characteristic, since his overall release point is so low?, and so forth.  

But for me, the defining characteristics are above.  7'ish K's, 2'ish walks, HR unknown, based on a change-speed game.

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To be CLIFF LEE, he would need more pitches.  Lee has three, maybe even four murderous pitches.  The same would go for FELIX and for JUSTIN VERLANDER.  They are attacking the hitters with a series of weapons that have proliferated for them as their careers have gone on.

Of course, Doug Fister started with two pitches -- the precision-homing fastball and changeup, and then he added an excellent overhand curve.  And then he added a very good slider.  Erasmo's slider may already be a good pitch; we'll see.  Statistically, it had a run value of +2.74 runs per 100 last year...

Erasmo tossed a few overhand change curves in 2012.  :: ominous music oowweeooweewooooo ::

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To be DAN HAREN, Erasmo would need a deadly cutter.  Guys like Haren, and ROY HALLADAY, they can use their popup-inducing cutters to kill batters on a game-in, game-out basis.  The fact that they can get in on hitters' hands SO well is defining for them.

You wouldn't comp Erasmo to Haren or Halladay, or Cliff Lee for this reason also.

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How about, could he become JAKE PEAVY?  Hm!  There's a thought.  Peavy is an 8k, 2bb guy who throws fly balls.  His cutter isn't exactly key to his game.

Thing I don't care for here ... Peavy's game doesn't seem classically change-speed.  He has four, five pitches, like Felix, just throws everything as needed; he's almost more like a super-finesse pitcher.

Still, I dunno.  

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HIROKI KURODA?  Calling card is a slider, which he mixes with a split for strike three.  I don't like it.  Quite a pitcher, but I wouldn't want to use him to forecast Erasmo.

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MATT CAIN?  There's another 8k, 2bb guy without gopheritis... thing is, his go-to breaking pitch is an 86 slider, almost a cutter.  He doesn't whipsaw hitters "in between" in classic style.   

JERED WEAVER is also more about pinpoint fastballs bounced against sliders breaking just off the zone or, back door, just into it.  It's not like he floats changeups belt-high to get you wayyy out in front.  Well, the last year or two he's done that some.

Funny, going through this list, how few pitchers there are right now who rely on straight changes and splitfingers.   What happened to the Pedros, Santanas and Oswalts*?

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Will spare you the rest of the list but ... here are the current MLB pitchers that SSI considers truly similar to Erasmo Ramirez:

• Doug Fister
• Kris Medlen
• Hisashi Iwakuma

Here's that neat Fangraphs article on Medlen vs Ramirez; you can google a similar article here on SSI.

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You look and you look and ... the more you look, the more Erasmo Ramirez looks like Doug Fister.  

Don Wakamatsu will tell you that Fister's height and downward angle are key for him.  They certainly put the wind at his back, but then again Erasmo throws a good 2-5 MPH harder than Fister does.  The long step for Fister merely cancels Erasmo's velo.  Or does it fully cancel the velo?  Am I underestimating the effective speed of his FB?

Ramirez does throw from a lower angle, helping the batters keep the ball in the zone a long time.  So did Pedro Martinez and Roy Oswalt, of course, who had 94 fastballs and tremendous change-speed games.

It's uncanny.  Ramirez and Fister both stand there the same way, and wind up the same way.  They have exactly the same happy-go-lucky, cool-breeze, invincible makeup.  They have the same ability to make adjustments right in the middle of an inning.

Ramirez is nothing less than a chance to get a mulligan on Doug Fister.  About six, eight starts this year, we're just as liable to have Fister back.

Would be nice,

Dr D