For months now, Aramis Ramirez has been terrible. He’s been consistently bad from day one on the 2010 season, and he’s never had a stretch of more than two games where he looked like a quality Major Leaguer, let alone the All-Star he’s been in years past.
Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs placed Ramirez on the disabled list, citing a recurring thumb problem that most assumed was legitimate, but similarly assumed was not the only reason for the DL stint. The other reason, of course, was to get him off the field, and give him some time to get his shit together.
“This is the right thing to do,” Ramirez said. “If I can’t swing the bat and contribute to this team, there’s no sense for me to be playing.
“Right now I’m not helping the team. I’ll try to get 100 percent and get back to what I’m used to being”
Ramirez is hitting.173 in 20 May games and just .168 for the season with 22 RBI in 47 games. It will be almost impossible for him to reach 100 RBI, something he has done six times before….
He already had a cortisone shot and tried slipping a spongey “donut” on the handle of his bat, but “every time I take a funny swing, it makes it worse. It doesn’t make any sense for me to be playing like that.”
Since injuring the thumb in Cincinnati in early May, there has been talk that Ramirez would need to sit for an extended period. He fought it.
“We talked about it before but I didn’t want to do it because I felt I was good enough to play,” he said.
Asked if this would be a good mental break as well, Ramirez said: “It’s not about a mental break. The only way to get out of a slump is playing. If you don’t play, you can’t get out of it. I tried to play through it and it didn’t work.” Chicago Breaking Sports.
Did you catch that? Ramirez is saying two very surprising things: 1.) This DL stint is solely related to his thumb, which is legitimately injured and harming his play; and 2.) the thumb injury has been affecting his play negatively since early May.
To the former point: fine. Good. Get 15 days off, rest it up, and I hope it gets better.
To the latter point: you better be exaggerating. If you sincerely kept playing for two months with a thumb injury that you *knew* was negatively affecting your play (and you were playing terribly, terribly) and refused to sit for a period in order to get better, that is nearly unforgivable.
