Horacio Ramirez 2009

According to sources, Horacio Ramirez will be given the Royals #4 starter role, leaving Luke Hochevar and Brian Bannister to fight it out for the last spot in their rotation for 2009. Not that the others are much better, but I really wonder what Ramirez has ever done to deserve this free pass. In 656.2 major league innings, he's struck out 301 and walked 251. That's terrible. He does tend to keep the ball on the ground, with a very good (but not spectacular) groundball rate that usually is in the vicinity of 50%. However, even that comes with a question mark, as Ramirez has tended to allow more home runs than would be expected given his groundball rate. Ramirez is 29 years old, so that's another reason for the Royals not to give him a spot in the rotation - either of the players he'll be taking the spot from are younger, and presumably more likely to show some improvement. The silver lining in all of this is that we can take advantage of the Royals poor decision making, and look to target Ramirez' opponents in daily leagues such as Draftbug.