Manny Ramirez Released By Oakland A’s

It depends on the curve you want to grade him on. What you’d expect from Manny? No power, and an ugly strikeout-to-walk ratio. Not the same hitter at all. But from a 40-year-old after a year away from the game? Well, not that bad, I guess.

But when the A’s signed Manny in the offseason, they might have been hoping he was a part of a surprise contender -- a veteran thumper that could help a pitching-heavy team. With the rough start to the season, and an outfield that’s hitting, the A’s might have figured there was a better use for their DH spot.

Seems like every Manny Ramirez update should lead with those salient facts. Manny is not a young man. And he’s missed a year of baseball. Either of those things would be kind of a big deal when anticipating how a player will perform. Both of them together are deadly.

So it’s not that much of a surprise the scouts who have watched Manny’s time with the Sacramento Rivercats aren’t besmitten. From Susan Slusser:

Whatever the reason, things didn’t go well for Ramirez in his first rehab start in AAA on Saturday, as he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

On Monday night, though, the old Manny showed up, taking a walk and hitting two singles against the Round Rock Express. Considering that the last time we saw Ramirez, he was busy flailing away at major-league hitting in Tampa, this is the first time Ramirez has been successful in a game since the end of 2010. He’ll take it.

Remember the old Bugs Bunny line?

Will it work? Who knows?

He’s coming. One day you’ll be watching Sportscenter and you’ll see live footage of a player trapped under the tarp in the upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum. Your brain will struggle to comprehend what’s going on. And then it will click.

The A’s plan to send Ramirez, who remains at extended spring training in Phoenix, on a 10-game Minor League assignment before they call him up.Ramirez was originally suspended for 100 games for violating MLB’s substance-abuse policy, testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the second time. The sentence was reduced to 50 games, though, with MLB considering his surprise retirement as “time served.” He’ll be eligible to come off the suspension on May 30.

It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to doubt the instances of Manny being Manny. They’re too perfect, too calculated and cynical. No one can be that Manny. There’s just no way.

Though I guess if anyone can, it’s Manny. Manny Ramirez opened spring training by asking Brett Anderson if he was the team’s video coordinator. And just a couple of days later, he tells CBS Sports this gem:

Manny Ramirez, who has twice failed drug tests, recently signed a minor-league contract with the Oakland Athletics. Tyler Kepner elected to write about it. You can kind of get the whole gist from his headline, which I suppose makes it a good headline:

But, why don’t we read beyond?

There have been some questions about how the A’s are going to fit Ramirez in, given their wealth of younger options at DH. Manager Bob Melvin isn’t too concerned. Via Susan Slusser:

Manny’s expected to suit up in the minors in the middle of May. So he could push his way to the majors at the end of May or the beginning of June. That would give the A’s two months to evaluate what they have, and that’s if Manny looks good. If Manny looks bad or otherwise unprepared, the A’s probably wouldn’t bring him right up, if they brought him up at all.

It’s true - because of the suspension, Manny won’t see the majors for a while. That’ll give the A’s an opportunity to play, I don’t know, Chris Carter or Brandon Allen or Kila Ka’aihue. There’ll be trial time. There just won’t be much trial time. Manny isn’t directly blocking anybody, but he could potentially interfere. We’ll see how the A’s manage that. It does help that the A’s are in complete control, having signed Manny to a cheap minor-league deal.

And as Bleszinski points out later in his post, you know who might really be able to learn something from Manny Ramirez? A certain Yoenis Cespedes. Even if Manny doesn’t have much left in the tank - and he might not - he’s long been one of the greatest right-handed hitters in baseball history. Guys like that can impart some knowledge. You don’t think of Manny as being the leader sort, but as a helper? Manny could probably help. If he’s willing.

Jon Heyman has the tweet:

And, he hasn’t played at all in nearly a year, and will be 40 years old in May, and probably shouldn’t pick up a fielder’s mitt at all, not even to hand it to a teammate.

It took just a single call from the Cave of Mystery, and Yoenis Cespedes became an Oakland Athletic. The world was stunned. Well, you were, anyway. But the A’s aren’t done. Buried in an article on the state of the A’s outfield ...

The way Susan Slusser writes about this makes it seem like a done deal being held up by red tape. Slusser is an excellent beat writer -- head of the BBWAA, even -- so she’s not likely to get coy with her readers. There’s a reason why she can’t write that Manny is officially the A’s DH, but it isn’t a good enough reason for her not to hint that it’s basically happening.

Joe Stiglich:

I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to me like the stars are aligning for Manny to end up with Oakland. It’s no guarantee, of course, and for all I know the A’s might be looking in other directions, but based on the latest information, or at least based on what’s been said most recently, the A’s look like the Manny favorites.

There are paragraphs that make sense in February. There are paragraphs that don’t. Here is one that doesn’t, from Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The A’s and Manny Ramirez. More ridiculous than the A’s and Magglio Ordonez, or more sensible? I go back and forth. The A’s signing Manny is crazy like emptying a bottle of ketchup down your pants and dancing on a table during a first date. There’s a one-percent chance that the date has a weird sense of humor, I guess. Might work out. The A’s signing Magglio is more like eating unwrapped packets of Splenda when the date’s head is turned. It’s a deeper, darker kind of crazy.

The man in charge in Baltimore is Dan Duquette. Dan Duquette is in charge of a mess. Dan Duquette is also the guy who gave Manny Ramirez an eight-year contract worth $160 million many moons ago. If anybody makes sense for Manny Ramirez, it’s probably the Orioles, who could use the attention. Signing Ramirez would do little to contend claims that the Orioles are a baseball sideshow, but I’ve heard that any publicity is good publicity. Manny could bring people to the park, at least for a little while.

Manny’s facing a long suspension. After that, he’s going to be rusty. He’s 39 years old. At this point, Manny Ramirez doesn’t deserve much more than a job with the Orioles. And at this point, the Orioles might not be able to do a whole hell of a lot better.

Yes, Manny’s still floating around, and according to ESPN Deportes, he’s close to making a decision - kind of. Translated quote:

Probably a minor league contract. I can’t actually imagine that a team would give him a major league contract at this point. For a bunch of reasons, not the least of which being that Ramirez will miss the season’s first 50 games. That’s kind of a thing.

According to the Associated Press:

Hey, who’s running this club anyway?

Of course they are.

Oakland interesa a Manny Ramírez

No circus, no shoved traveling secretaries, no trips inside the left field wall to relieve himself. No iPod while on defense, no trips to the bar with the opposition on nights he excused himself from the game -- no reasons for teams to want to deal him in the middle of the chase for a playoff spot. Pretend none of that is a concern, and that the only thing that matters is how good Manny Ramirez will be in the box scores every night. Is he worth signing?

Ramirez, on the other hand, is going to be so hard-up for work that even a non-roster invitation to spring training could bring him on board (assuming he’s as serious about a comeback as he claims). The cost of an NRI is playing time for others in spring training, and if a team is having such a rough go of things that they’re looking into Manny to begin with, quality players missing out on spring at-bats probably isn’t an issue.

“I want to show people that Manny can change, that he can do the right thing,” Ramirez told ESPN’s Pedro Gomez in an interview. “And to show people that I still can play. I don’t want to leave the game like I did. I also want to show my kids that if you make a mistake, don’t quit. Just go back and fix it. And if you’re going to leave, leave the right way.“You have to give him this much: He’s not doing it for the money. He’s openly willing to play for the league minimum. He’s a baseball lifer who gazed into the abyss of inactivity and freaked out. He was considering going to Japan for a while to get those baseball juices flowing. He just wants to play.

He also says that he wants to be a role model.

ESPN’s Buster Olney tweeted the scoop:

No problem, right? Manny goes back to hitting home runs, right? Not so fast, tweets Buster:

But there’s a little more that comes with Manny. Just a little. He’s a living matryoshka doll of nonsense; with each layer you open up, a little more nonsense is found. It’d be one thing if was just the standard where’s-Manny-I-don’t-know-wait-how-in-the-hell-did-he-get-on-top-of-that-light-tower-get-down-from-there Manny nonsense. He’s added a new dimension, though. He left the Rays after a couple of weeks last season because he was busted for performance-enhancing drugs.

They weren’t just regular PEDs, either. That would be Manny being everyone. For it to be Manny being Manny, he had to take female fertility drugs. You can’t spell ovaries without O-B-P. Well, Manny can’t, anyways. Oh, and when he signs, he has to start serving a 50-game suspension. He has baggage, inside the baggage is other baggage, and he’s waiting at the carousel for the rest of the baggage that he checked. Form a line to the left, teams.

Now Ramirez is in the news again. This news isn’t quite so negative. Via Jon Morosi:

Ramirez is applying for reinstatement from the retired list, and according to Morosi, he would be eligible to resume playing after serving a 50-game suspension. I could’ve sworn Ramirez was facing a 100-game suspension, for his second violation, so either something has changed or Morosi is wrong. I don’t know.*

If you’ve ever wondered where the expression “Manny being Manny” came from, this video does a pretty good job explaining it all:

Manny Ramirez has officially retired at age 39, only a few games into the 2011 season. His Hall of Fame candidacy will be largely impacted by his involvement with performance-enhancing drugs, of course, but Manny produced the sort of statistics that would otherwise merit a shoo-in to Cooperstown.

One of the very most dangerous hitters of his era, Manny produced statistics that should more than qualify for the Hall of Fame. Through 19 seasons, he has maintained an unbelievably impressive on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .996. That is the ninth-highest career OPS mark of all time, and among active players, that number is second only to Albert Pujols’ 1.084.