Hanley slugging like the greats by putting ball in air

The disappointing debut of Hanley Ramirez wasn’t the only reason that the Red Sox made a front-office change late last summer, but his implosion (along with Pablo Sandoval’s) may have been the most visible. An attempted transition from shortstop to left field failed miserably and publicly; at the plate, after a red-hot April, he injured his right shoulder running into the wall in early May and hit just .239/.275/.372 before shutting it down entirely in late August.

Though another position change — this time to first base — went much better, the start of the second year of Ramirez’s $88 million contract looked like more of the same at the plate. Over the first three months of this season, Ramirez hit only .273/.345/.409, which comes out to slightly below an average Major League hitter. So against all that backdrop of struggle, it might have been easy to miss what’s been a remarkable turnaround. Since the middle of June, Ramirez has been one of the 10 best hitters in the Majors. Yes, really.

Since June 22 — and while that seems arbitrary, we’ll soon explain why that date was chosen — 150 hitters have stepped to the plate at least 50 times. Check out the top 10 in OPS, which, despite being inferior to a more advanced stat like Weighted Runs Created Plus, is good enough for our purposes.

OPS leaders since June 22, minimum 50 plate appearances 1. 1.127 — Joey Votto 2. 1.102 — Mike Trout 3. 1.093 — Brian Dozier 4. 1.065 — Freddie Freeman 5. 1.062 — Kris Bryant 6. .997 — Josh Donaldson 7. .986 — Mookie Betts 8. .985 — Corey Seager 9. .984 — Daniel Murphy 10. .970 — Ramirez

Look at that list! It includes the likely top three finishers in the National League MVP Award voting, and potentially three of the top four names in the American League MVP Award voting. Names in the next 10 include Jose Altuve, Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz and David Ortiz. The next 10 after that include Anthony Rizzo, Nolan Arenado and Justin Turner. Though it no longer feels like Ramirez is one of baseball’s elite hitters, he’s certainly been performing like one for nearly three months.

So why did we pick June 22? Because it represented a considerable turning point in Ramirez’s …

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