JAWS and the 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot: Hanley Ramirez

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For the better part of his 20s, Hanley Ramirez was one of the game’s top shortstops, at least on the offensive side — the type of hitter capable of carrying a team despite his shaky defense. During the 2006–14 span, he won NL Rookie of the Year honors, made three straight All-Star teams, joined the 30/30 club, claimed a batting title, finished second in the MVP voting, and served as a lineup centerpiece on two division winners. Unfortunately, his career unraveled after he inked a big free agent deal with the Red Sox, the same team that had originally signed him out of the Dominican Republic. Between multiple position changes and a slew of injuries — particularly to both shoulders — he slid into replacement-level oblivion, and played just 60 games after his age-33 season.

Hanley Ramirez was born on December 23, 1983 in Samaná, a town on the northeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic, to parents Toribio (an auto mechanic) and Isabela Ramirez. Via Molly Knight’s The Best Team Money Can Buy, his mother wanted to name him Juan Jose and call him J.J., but his father objected. His paternal grandmother, a devotee of Shakespeare, suggested Hamlet, which his parents agreed to, but the clerk who wrote up the birth certificate misspelled the name, and the error stuck. “But that’s okay, because I love my name,” Ramirez told Knight.

Ramirez took to baseball quickly. Big for his age — he would grow to 6-foot-2 – he led his Little League team in home runs when he was five. By the time he was 15, he was starring at Adbentista High School and drawing the attention of scouts. According to scout Levy Ochoa, the Red Sox signed him for a $20,000 bonus on July 2, 2000, when he was 16 years old. He was as green as the grass itself. “Let me tell you, before I signed I didn’t know they paid you for playing baseball,” Ramirez told the Miami Herald in 2006. “I played because I loved the game. It was incredible when they told me they were going to sign me and they were going to give me money.”

Ramirez spent 2001 in the Dominican Summer League, hitting .345 with 25 extra-base hits and 13 steals in 54 games, then came stateside the following year and hit a sizzling .353/.401/.548 with six homers in a season split between the Red Sox’s Gulf Coast League affiliate and their Low-A Lowell team. Baseball America ranked him as the top prospect of both the GCL and the New York-Penn League, and noted that managers praised his athleticism, range, arm strength, bat speed, power, and feel for the game, comparing him to Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra at the same stage. However, BA sounded a note of caution: “While [GCL] managers universally praised Ramirez’s can’t-miss talent, they were also unanimous in their concern for his lackadaisical, sometimes cocky approach to the game.” That fall, Ramirez was sent home from instructional league for cursing at a trainer.

The ups and downs continued. While BA ranked the 19-year-old Ramirez 19th on its Top 100 Prospects list in the spring of 2003, in May of that season the Red Sox suspended him for 10 days and demoted him from A-level Augusta to extended spring training for making an obscene gesture toward a fan. His conduct did improve later in the season, but his performance wasn’t overwhelming (.275/.327/.403, eight homers, 36 steals), and he slipped to 39th on BA’s Top 100 Prospects list. Back on track with a 2004 season split between High-A Sarasota and Double-A Portland, he rose to 10th on BA’s list, with the publication practically drooling: “[W]hen he’s right, balls jump off his bat and have carry to all fields. His defense is spectacular, as Ramirez has above-average range, plus-plus arm strength and soft hands. He also has plus speed.”

Meanwhile, after trading Garciaparra in mid-2004 and winning the World Series with Orlando Cabrera at shortstop, the Red Sox had signed free agent Edgar Renteria to a four-year, $40 million deal to take over the position, clouding Ramirez’s future. Renteria took Ramirez under his wing in spring training, mentoring him despite the likelihood that either a position change or a team change could be in the offing for the youngster, particularly with Dustin Pedroia emerging as Boston’s preferred middle infield prospect. Ramirez returned to Portland, where he spent half a season paired with Pedroia in a double play combination, but he slipped to a .271/.335/.385 line with six home runs. BA flagged his lack of focus and preparation, and manager Todd Claus noted a lack of consistency, recalling in 2009, “Any time the stage got big, Hanley played big. He played well every time he was being watched. But he needed to learn to play well consistently, all the time, even if there were only 100 people in the stands.”

In a late-season call-up by the Red Sox, Ramirez struck out in his only two plate appearances, 12 days apart; the first, on September 20, 2005, was against the Rays’ Tim Corcoran. On November 24, just over a month before his 22nd birthday, he was traded to the Marlins along with Aníbal Sánchez and two other pitchers in exchange for Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and Guillermo Mota. He collected his first career hit on Opening Day, April 3, 2006, a single against the Astros’ Roy Oswalt, who then struck him out three times. The next day he went 4-for-5, with all four hits and three RBI, including a double, coming against Andy Pettitte. He hit his first two home runs on April 18 against the Reds’ Eric Milton in Cincinnati. He strung together an impressive season, batting .292/.353/.480 (116 OPS+) with 51 steals, 11 triples, and 17 homers, and narrowly beat out the Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman for NL Rookie of the Year honors.

Ramirez quickly developed into a major offensive threat, hitting .332/.386/.562 (145 OPS+) with 28 homers and 51 steals in 2007 and .301/.400/.540 (143 OPS+) with 33 homers and 35 steals in ’08. His defense in the first of those years was downright awful (-28 DRS), limiting him to 4.4 WAR, but he improved to -3 DRS (the same as 2006) and placed seventh in the league with 6.7 WAR in ’08, after having undergone surgery on his left labrum the previous fall. After signing a six-year, $70 million extension in May 2008, he was elected to start that year’s All-Star Game, and led the NL with 125 runs scored; in both 2007 and ’08, he received down-ballot MVP support. The Marlins, who’d slipped from 78-84 in 2006 under Joe Girardi to 71-91 in ’07 under Fredi Gonzalez, improved to 84-77 in ’08, their highest win total since their ’03 World Series-winning team.

After playing for the Dominican Republic team in the 2009 World Baseball Classic, Ramirez kicked off his regular season with an Opening Day grand slam off the Nationals’ Steven Shell. While the rest of his April wasn’t quite as notable, he got extremely hot in May, and didn’t cool down until the second half of September. Overall, he hit .342/.410/.543 with 24 homers and 27 steals, leading the NL in batting average, ranking third in WAR (7.3), fifth in OPS+ (148), and sixth in on-base percentage; again he started the All-Star Game. Albert Pujols won the NL MVP unanimously; Ramirez finished second, having garnered 15 of the 32 second-place votes.

By DRS, Ramirez’s defense actually nosed above average in 2009, but it fell off precipitously thereafter; he was 19 runs below average in ’10. Though he still hit 21 home runs and stole 32 bases, his offense regressed as well (.300/.378/.475, 126 OPS+), and old concerns about his level of professionalism resurfaced when Gonzalez briefly benched him for failing to hustle in a May 17 game. After a bloop by the Diamondbacks’ Tony Abreu dropped into short left field, Ramirez accidentally kicked the ball about 100 feet into the left field corner, then jogged to retrieved it as two runs scored and Abreu reached third. To be fair, Ramirez had fouled a ball off an ankle earlier in the game, but after being pulled, he exacerbated the situation with his postgame comments about Gonzalez, a career minor leaguer. Per the Associated Press:

“It’s his team. He can do whatever,” Ramírez said, mixing in an expletive. “There’s nothing I can do about it. That’s OK. He doesn’t understand that. He never played in the big leagues,” he said.

…“We got a lot of people dogging it after ground balls,” he said. “They don’t apologize.”

Woof. Ramirez missed the Marlins’ next game, but returned to the lineup after apologizing individually to each of his teammates. He recovered from the flap to start his third straight All-Star game — by which point Gonzalez had been fired, replaced by Edwin Rodriguez — but finished the season with just 2.8 WAR, merely good, not the MVP-caliber level of his past two seasons. His descent continued, as he hit just .243/.333/.379 (95 OPS+) with -13 DRS across just 92 games in 2011, missing time first due to sciatica and then a left shoulder injury, suffered while diving for a ball on August 2 against the Mets. He didn’t play again that season and underwent surgery in September.

Over the winter of 2011–12, the Marlins rebranded in preparation for their move from a suburban multipurpose stadium into a new downtown Miami ballpark. Their new look and name was more than cosmetic, as they traded for White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and Cubs righty Carlos Zambrano, and signed a trio of All-Stars in free agency: lefty Mark Buehrle, closer Heath Bell, and shortstop José Reyes. Ramirez agreed to move to third base to accommodate Reyes, but his offense and defense remained subpar. Through the season’s first 97 games, he hit for just a 100 OPS+, was 10 runs below average at third, and netted 0.6 WAR; meanwhile the team was seven games below .500 (45-52). On July 25, Ramirez received a reprieve in the form of a four-player trade with the Dodgers, who sent Nathan Eovaldi to Miami. Sold to Guggenheim Baseball Management just three months earlier, the Dodgers were beefing up payroll after Frank McCourt, the previous owner, had steered them into bankruptcy. They were eight games above .500 (53-46), vying for their first playoff spot since 2009.

Though he initially played third base for the Dodgers, Ramirez was soon shifted back to shortstop. He perked up to a 112 OPS+ the rest of the way, and while the Dodgers soon faded from contention, they continued to add talent in trades, most notably with a blockbuster that brought over Beckett, Carl Crawford, and Adrián González from the Red Sox. In 2013, Ramirez led the lineup with 5.2 WAR despite playing just 86 games due to a torn ligament in his right thumb and a left hamstring strain. The first of those injuries, suffered while diving for a ball during the World Baseball Classic, required surgery that cost him most of April. He hit .345/.402/.638 (189 OPS+) with 20 homers and average defense at shortstop, helping the Dodgers win the NL West, and despite being banged up, he went on a rampage against the Braves in the Division Series, hitting .345/.402/.638 with six extra-base hits and six RBI in four games. The Cardinals, their NLCS opponent, took note, and Game 1 starter Joe Kelly drilled Ramirez in the ribs with a 95-mph fastball in his first plate appearance, fracturing a rib.

Kelly claimed that the plunking was unintentional, as he told the Los Angeles Times in 2023:

Hanley Ramirez probably should have gotten out of the way or turned inside a little more. It was a fastball in and before the game we game planned to not let Hanley beat us. He’s not a very good inside fastball hitter. One slipped and obviously broke his rib and that will forever go down as the biggest pitch to turn the Cardinals season to move on. Obviously, it was an accident.

The injury altered the complexion of the series. Ramirez not only missed Game 2 (a 1-0 Dodgers loss) but went just 2-for-15 overall as the Cardinals won in six.

Though he was limited to 128 games due to an oblique strain and a variety of other ailments, Ramirez was still very good in 2014 (.283/.369/.448, 133 OPS+), producing 3.7 WAR despite his declining defense. In a Division Series rematch with the Cardinals, he hit .429/.500/.500, but five of his six hits came in losses. The Dodgers fell in four games.

With that, Ramirez hit free agency with a profile that carried a great deal of risk and portended a position change, as he’d averaged 116 games, -8 DRS, and 2.6 WAR over his age-27 through age-30 seasons. The Red Sox, who had crashed to 71 wins in 2014 after winning the World Series the year before, signed him to a four-year, $88 million deal with a vesting option for a fifth season, shortly after also signing Pablo Sandoval to a five-year, $90 million deal. With the team still committed to Xander Bogaerts at shortstop despite his rough rookie season, Boston planned to move Ramirez to left field, which in Fenway Park meant learning to deal with the Green Monster.

It did not go well. In 2015, Ramirez hit for just an 88 OPS+ while hampered by injuries, including a sprained left shoulder that happened while running into an outfield wall in May, a power-sapping left hand injury from getting hit by a line drive, and then a right shoulder injury suffered while throwing a ball. Ramirez was so bad in left field (-14 DRS in 92 games) that by August he was taking grounders at first base in anticipation of another position change. After hitting 19 home runs in the first half, he went homerless in the second before being shut down in late August due to right shoulder soreness. He missed the team’s final 39 games.

Ramirez’s 2016 season went much better. Despite providing DH-caliber defense at first base (-7 DRS), he hit .286/.361/.505 (126 OPS+) with 30 home runs and 2.6 WAR in 147 games. His three-run walk-off homer off the Yankees’ Dellin Betances on September 15 kicked off an 11-game winning streak that helped Boston pull away from the AL East pack and win the division.

Though Ramirez doubled twice off Trevor Bauer in the Division Series opener against Cleveland, the Red Sox were swept.

The retirement of David Ortiz after the 2016 season opened up Boston’s DH spot, but Ramirez proved unable to fill Big Papi’s sizable shoes. He sank to a 95 OPS+ and -0.3 WAR in 2017, then underwent surgery to debride cartilage in his left shoulder. His performance didn’t improve, not that the Red Sox gave him a particularly long leash post-surgery. In the midst of an 0-for-21 slide, he was designated for assignment and released in late May 2018, with about $14.5 million remaining on his contract.

Bypassing opportunities to catch on elsewhere, Ramirez went home and focused on getting healthy before signing a minor league deal with Cleveland in October of that year. But while he made the big club out of spring training and homered twice in the first five games, he played in just 16 games before being DFA’d. In July, he underwent right shoulder surgery. He played winter ball in the Dominican Republic in 2019–20 and again in ’21–22, but he never suited up for a major league team again.

The 2025 ballot has plenty of newcomers who performed well in their 20s but faded in their 30s. Leaving aside the catchers (for whom I use fWAR instead of bWAR) and the slam-dunk candidate, Ichiro Suzuki, here’s how the other position players stack up:

Ramirez is hardly alone in fading in his early 30s after an excellent run in his 20s; warts and all, he was the best-hitting shortstop in the game for the 2006–14 span, and he trailed only Tulowitzki in WAR (36.6 to 37.8). Had he stayed healthy and found a positional fit, we’d be considering him in a different light — perhaps a few years down the road, as he’d have likely extended his career. Alas, this part of the ballot contains no shortage of those load-bearing what-ifs.

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