Things are Looking Up, Ho-Ram Designated

Greinke got shelled last night, the Royals have lost 8 straight games, and Tony Pena Jr keeps getting the starting nod at SS despite his lofty .053 average.  So why am I a happy Royals fan today?

The plague of the Royals pitching staff, LHP-Horacio Ramirez, has been designated for assignment to make room for Luke Hochevar.  This doesn’t mean he is officially out of our hair, but at this point I will take what little good news I can get from this team.  Ho-Ram can choose to accept the designation and go down to the minors or he can opt to become a free agent.  If he is smart he will accept the assignment because he’s not going to get picked up by anyone else.

On the year he has pitched 22.2 innings for the Royals with a 5.96 ERA, 1.68 WHIP and pathetic 1.18 SO/BB.  Ho-Ram being signed to a 1 year contract for $1.8 million stands out as Dayton Moore’s biggest mistake this offseason.  Without the Royals, the best Ramirez would have ended up with would have been a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.

Trey Hillman’s comments and the story written by David Singh on MLB.com try to paint Ho-Ram as someone who is valuable to a ML organization, but we all know the truth.  I especially enjoy the caption under his picture in the story, “Horacio Ramirez had not given up a run since May 23rd, but his velocity had been down.”  It is true that he hasn’t given up a run since his appearance on May 22nd, but since then he has pitched a grand total of 5.0 innings with 3 hits allowed, 3 walks and only 1 strike out.  We also shouldn’t gloss over that in 2.0 innings between May 21st and May 22nd he gave up 5 hits, 1 walk, and 5 runs.

For myself, and Royals fans everywhere, I hope last night was the last time Horacio Ramirez will ever put on a Kansas City Royals uniform.