Hanley Ramirez: The best SS in baseball

As the season comes to a close, with our playoff hopes dashed like non-ironic rain on your wedding day, I’ll be making a few posts on shit to look at in the last bit of  hometown baseball we have until the dreaded 5 month span before the return of the Grapefruit League.

Hanley Ramirez is looking to lock up the first batting title in the history of the Florida Marlins. It seems like an absoulute certainty. Unless he goes something like 0-42 in the last 9 games of the season his commanding .020 lead over Albert Pujols will hold. It will be the first NL Batting Title to be won by a shortstop since the Pirates’ Dick Groat won it in 1960.

Hanley also has a shot at the NL Most Valuable Player award, but this is an outside shot due to the Hispanic Babe Ruth playing first base in St. Louis. For Hanley to win the MVP, a few things would have to happen. Pujols would have to go hitless for the rest of the season, the Redbirds would have to collapse massively amongst his lack of production and miss the playoffs and Prince Albert would have to be caught with steriods and maybe some bloody gloves on his person while being stopped at by airport security after being caught as the alias of Al Berdul Salim Mohammed, an al-Qaeda mastermind. Keep in mind that this all needs to happen before the postseason, so keep your fingers crossed.

Aditionally, HanRam in line for a few other, lesser known things. If he keeps up his production, he is likely to have the 3rd best single-season OPS+ in team history with 155, behind Miguel Caberra’s 2006 and the monsterous 1996 of Gary Sheffield. He is also in line for the best since NL expansion in 1961. If he picks it up a little bit after a slow week, he could pass up Ernie Bank’s 1958 OPS+ of 156 and break in to the top 10 in NL history. Right now he’s 12th behind that one Ernie Bank year, one Rogers Hornsby season (his rookie year before moving to the other side of the middle), one Arky Vaughn season, and eight Honus Wagner years. A 156 OPS+ would tie Wagner and Banks for 10th, with a 157 taking it outright.

While his chances at the MVP are slim (come on PATRIOT Act, do your job) Homeboy still has a chance at the NL Hank Aaron Award, which is supposedly goes to the best hitter in the league. Now, I know what your are saying, what about that Dominican Lou Gehrig? Well gentlemen (and dames too), last year Pujols won the MVP for the same reason, which meant that he obviously won the Hank Aaron Award, right? Nope, Aramis Ramirez won it, instantly devaluing the award to an even lower standing than it already had (”the Hank what Award?”) and proving that anyone can basically win it based on whatever, as long as the broadcasters feel like it.