What if Washington Nationals signed Manny Ramirez?
With pitchers and catchers reporting within the next week, teams are running out of time to sign players who are currently without a team. One of them is former All-Star Manny Ramirez, who has been suspended twice for steroid use over the past few seasons. The Washington Nationals failed to get Prince Fielder and after the cross-town Orioles said no to the former slugger, is there any chance the Nats would come from nowhere and snag the washed up Ramirez? With the way this off-season has been shaping up, nothing would surprise me anymore.
The biggest problem with the Nationals last year is that their offense wasn’t consistent enough and when things got bad, they wouldn’t be able to hit a beach ball. Ramirez struggled in his brief stint with the Tampa Bay Rays, collecting more strikeouts (4) than hits (1) before voluntarily retiring. That’s because he had a second positive test for performance-enhancing drugs and did not want to serve a 100-game suspension for second time offenders. His suspension has since been reduced to 50 games, but he would still have to sit out those games before playing in the majors again
If Ramirez signs with the Nationals, which is very unlikely, his first game would be on his 40th birthday, May 30th against the Miami Marlins. Being in the National League, we would get to see Manny’s antics in the outfield since there is no designated hitter in the senior circuit. I still think he could hit a little bit and playing him in left-field against left-handed pitchers would probably be the extent of his role with the team. The Nats do play 9 games at AL parks, so defense for those games wouldn’t be as big of an issue. Jayson Werth would move to center-field if Manny plays and Michael Morse would move to right.
Eyewitness accounts say that Manny looked great during a workout, but that’s the same garbage we heard last year before a line of .059/.059/.059 caused Ramirez to abruptly quit on a team that gave him a chance. There’s the media circus that travels wherever Manny goes, but there’s already a lot of attention with Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg. I feel like Manny’s antics would draw people to the ballpark, but that would be hypocritical because that goes for Bryce and he shouldn’t start the year in the majors. There’s also the issue of how much money Ramirez would command, but I’d guess that the deal would be non-guaranteed and heavily incentive-based.
In the past few months, Prince signed with a mystery team, the Detroit Tigers. Albert Pujols ran away from the Cardinals and signed with the Los Angeles Angels, while Cuban outfielder Yoenis Cespedes stunned everyone by signing with Oakland. The Nationals signing Manny Ramirez would be an awful idea. As fun as the guy is, Manny being Manny is a problem no team wants to have. There are better odds that I get struck by lightning tomorrow, but I’ve always been told to keep an open mind. In the world of baseball, you never know.
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