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Q.  He got pummelled for seven earnies.  That he lost a battle is clear.  Any idea why he lost it?

A.  His vaunted fastball command, wasn't.  After five or six hitters, you had to watch through a grimace.  

58 pitches in, he had 29 strikes and 29 balls thrown.  You might get lucky against some teams; against the Red Sox, nada.  It's not enough to be a good pitcher, said Seigbert Tarrasch; you also gotta pitch good.

Also, he threw only 10 changeups out of 100 pitches.  Odd.  It isn't like the Red Sox are shy on lefty hitters.  So it's kind of like Hisashi Iwakuma was pitching without his shuuto and missing with his location ... no, actually, it was VERY like that.

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Q.  He gained ground in the war?  Like what?

A.  As you'll recall, Ramirez has outstanding fastball location,and an outstanding changeup, period.  Check out this Fangraphs .gif on the cambio ... in 2012, his change racked up a sky-high +3.18 saved per 100 times thrown.  That's better than Felix' change, we can tell you without looking.

And that's despite the fact that he leaned on it heavily ... it's one thing for Reggie Bush to average 6.1 yards per carry, if he rushes 8 times per game.  Let's see him average 6.1 if he's carrying 24 times, know what I'm saying?  Ramirez had a nuclear run value on his change despite Marshawn Lynch-type usage of it.

...........

That said, what he didn't have, was much of a slider ... today's slider was two good notches better.  It was 86-88 MPH, not 83 MPH.  It had tight spin, a late break, and he teased with it just off the corner.  A real David Cone wipeout slider at times.  The F/X system didn't even refer to it as a "slider."  The F/X system classified it as a "cutter."  It wasn't; it had a big late break, but that's how much of a power slider it was.

You'll recall that Doug Fister, when he first came up, had precisely that -- the fastball command and a signature changeup.  He has grown since then...

Ramirez is in a position to improve, and improve huge, from where he sat in 2012.  And in this game he had the seismo's of doing just that.

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Q.  So the one step back CAUSES the two steps forward?

A.  In order to improve the slider, he probably had to neglect the changeup temporarily ... Doogie improved in hiccups, one pitch phasing out, another one phasing in, until they all collected in a wonderfully delightful little cellophane Christmas package that could be exchanged at the complaint desk for Chance Ruffin.  (Who I'm going to catch tonight; he's a starter now.)

Mo' Dawg will tell you:  Any time you try to make a serious improvement in your golf swing, you're liable to shoot something less than your record score the first time out.  Improvement is a tough process and baseball's a tough game...

We've seen this script before, with Fister.  It's fascinating to watch the echo of it.  Sure hope it winds up in the same zip code.

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Q.  He's a pretty hot commodity in roto, isn't he?

A.  Here's an insightful, if juvenile, post by Eno Harris (now I get why you guys refrain from calling him Erasmo or Erazmo or whatever).  Harris aptly jumps on the fact that the 2012 Ramirez had a good fastball, a superb changeup, and ... check the table of comps that Harris runs.  Whoa doggie.

Harris calls him "flawed" because his third pitch is "meh" ... I suspect he realizes that the logic is suspect, but wants to avoid committing to Ramirez too strongly, and be left holding the bag.

In any case, we're left with the question, "What if Ramirez had a plus SLIDER, too?"  And in Thursday's game, that is precisely what Ramirez had.

Hence the title of this article.  ... If one game, 7 runs, scared you off -- hey, I'll take him off your fantasy team's hands.  Give you Joe Saunders for him?

Cheers,

Jeff