PEORIA, Ariz. — There’s no place for Horacio Ramirez in the Seattle Mariners’ starting rotation anymore, and the bullpen offers little more than an existence in sporadic long relief.
In lieu of anything else to attain, Ramirez is pitching this month for something else:
Himself.
“All I can control is my effort and my preparation,” said Ramirez, the Mariners’ fourth starter when last season began. “That’s what I’m doing right now.”
He has no other choice.
Ramirez pitched himself into this position with a horrible 2007. He went 8-7 only because his 7.07 run support average was the third-highest in the American League. He finished with a 7.16 earned run average, and his 8.70 road ERA was the highest in the major leagues.
“No excuses, last year just didn’t go my way,” he said. “That’s something I want to put behind me.”
He had a lot to forget.
Ramirez went 0-3 in his last five starts and was booed into the offseason. That happened Sept. 15 when manager John McLaren lifted him after he’d allowed three hits, a walk and four runs without getting an out in the first inning against the Devil Rays.
What followed was a winter in which Ramirez labored to clear his mind of all that went wrong.
“That’s something that’s hard for me to do,” he said. “I kind of hold onto things and I think that sometimes works against me. It’s a battle that I’m still struggling with. You want to forget the season, but you want to learn from it, too.
“It was a very, very frustrating year. I could never really get into a good rhythm. I couldn’t get a good string of starts going. I feel like the whole season I just kind of battled. There were some times I thought I’d figured something out, then things would happen where that wasn’t the case.”
Why such a struggle?
Tendinitis in his left shoulder didn’t help.
Ramirez won two straight starts in May, allowing one earned run in 61/3 innings May 19 and three earned runs in six innings on May 24. The following day, he began a stint on the disabled list that lasted nearly eight weeks.
There also was the adjustment to the American League, which he says he didn’t handle well.
“Changing leagues was a lot more difficult than I had thought,” said Ramirez, who’d pitched the previous four seasons with the Braves before the Mariners traded for him. “This is a real, real tough league and there’s no break. There was a string of starts where I faced Detroit, Boston and the Yankees.”
Unlike the National League where there’s the breather of facing the other team’s pitcher, he learned there’s no automatic out in the AL.
“That’s a huge difference, when you’re facing a guy like David Ortiz instead of a guy who’s going to sacrifice,” Ramirez said. “Your concentration level has got to be at the top during the whole course of the game. I think I’m better prepared for that now.”
The question is whether Ramirez will get a chance to show it.
McLaren has been vague about Ramirez’s role, saying only that he’ll get a fair chance to prove himself this month.
“We’ll give him every opportunity to see where he fits on the staff,” McLaren said. “He’ll get a chance to pitch on a regular basis. He’ll get some innings.”
Ramirez pitched two scoreless innings against San Diego on Saturday and will start this morning’s B game against the Padres, going three innings. His next outing probably will come Monday in one of the Mariners’ split-squad games against Arizona or Milwaukee.
“I really am being honest when I say I’m trying to focus on what I need to do,” he said. “I can’t control any decisions, I can’t control what role I’m in. I just want to make sure that I’m prepared.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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