| Detroit Free Press
Detroit Tigers C Wilson Ramos: ‘I know how to handle’ young pitchers
Detroit Tigers catcher Wilson Ramos talks Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, about joining a new team and working with young pitchers.
Evan Petzold, Detroit Free Press
Former Detroit Tigers All-Star and Hall of Fame catcher Ivan ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez remembers meeting Wilson Ramos for the first time in 2010. Traded from the Minnesota Twins to the Washington Nationals that July, the 22-year-old Ramos served as Rodriguez’s backup.
He was a good listener.
He was eager to learn.
He was extremely focused.
He wasn’t afraid to ask questions.
That’s what Rodriguez, 38 years old at the time, noticed about his catching protégé. In 2011, he spent his last MLB season taking a backseat to Ramos, allowing the up-and-comer to handle the starting gig.
“He was developing fast,” Rodriguez, now 49, told the Free Press on Wednesday. “He was ready to win in the big leagues. When I caught, he always sat next to me. When he caught, I always talked to him about things I saw on the field. He’s a good kid.”
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Ramos, now 33, is preparing to enter his 12th season. He is the newest member of the Tigers, after inking a one-year, $2 million contract, and his mentor has high expectations. Rodriguez played for the Tigers from 2004-08, making four All-Star Games and reaching the 2006 World Series during his stop in Detroit.
“In my belief, he’s still one of the best catchers in the game,” Rodriguez said. “The problem is the injuries don’t let him be the player that we all know he can be. The Tigers have a really good catcher in Wilson Ramos. I believe that if Wilson stays healthy, he’s going to produce.”
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The conversation in March 2011 — Ramos’ second year in the majors and Rodriguez’s 21st and final — started with then-Nationals manager Jim Riggleman. The discussion, he thought, would be difficult.
But it only lasted 10-15 minutes.
Ramos needed more in-game reps as the organization’s catcher of the future, and Rodriguez, classy as ever, didn’t have a problem with Riggleman’s request. To best help the team, the veteran set his personal desires aside, even putting his pursuit of 3,000 hits on hold. (He finished with 2,844 in his career.)
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“They brought him in for me to work with him,” Rodriguez said. “The last year that I was there, he played most of the games. Basically, we worked a lot together. I did things that I thought were great for him, defensively and offensively.”
In return, Ramos made a promise.
“I will learn with Pudge, he’s going to teach me a lot,” Ramos told reporters in 2011, upon earning a greater role. “I want to learn with him, so I will try to do the best I can. He’s got a lot of experience. I need to get experience too. I want to play a lot of years with this team, so I need to learn a lot.”
‘Be strong mentally’
Ramos, as he vowed, soaked up Rodriguez’s knowledge and spent seven years (2010-16) with the Nationals. His final year in Washington was his best, hitting .307 with 22 homers and 80 RBIs in 131 games, posting a 3.6 WAR. He made the All-Star Game for the first time, as well.
One year earlier, in 2015, he caught former Tiger Max Scherzer’s two no-hitters. He strengthened his résumé, and relationship with Scherzer, by catching his 20-strikeout game in 2016 against the Tigers. (By the way, Ramos also called ex-Tiger Jordan Zimmermann’s no-hitter in 2014’s season finale.)
“(Seventeen strikeouts is) when it started actually hitting me a little bit,” Ramos said about Scherzer’s 20-strikeout performance. “I started trying to dictate the game and game-calling based on trying to get punch outs as opposed to trying to have the (hitter) put the ball in play. And that’s when it became more obvious of what was going on.”
Those historic scenarios set him up for a payday — two years, $12.5 million — from the Tampa Bay Rays in free agency. Yet it didn’t come without injury concerns.
Ramos tore an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee in May 2012. He suffered another torn ACL in his right knee in September 2016, ending his campaign early and costing him the first three months of 2017. He battled hamstring strains in 2013 and 2018, and a fractured left hand in 2014.
Had he been healthy, the Nats might have spent big to retain him on a long-term deal.
Through those injuries, Ramos leaned on Rodriguez’s most important lesson. Wise words from his mentor helped him take care of his body, restore it to full health and push forward. Since his ACL tear in 2016, there hasn’t been a major setback.
“I hope everything I taught him is staying with him,” Rodriguez said. “But I taught him the strong part of the game, which is the mind. I always taught him he needs to stay strong, needs to be strong mentally.”
‘You got two jobs to do’
Utilizing mental toughness doesn’t solely happen when injuries arise, Rodriguez said. It’s a daily approach every player must take to be successful. For Ramos, the key to his longevity was learning to separate his offense from his defense.
He is considered one of the better offensive catchers in the league, with a .274 career batting average, 128 homers and 514 RBIs across 946 games. In 2019, with the New York Mets, Ramos hit .288 with 14 homers and 73 RBIs in 141 games.
“Look, you’re a great hitter,” Rodriguez recalls telling him in 2011. “And you’re going to be a great, great hitter in the game of baseball. But your defensive part of the game is the most important one now.”
Many still have reservations about Ramos’ defense, in part because of the injuries. He struggles with framing pitches low in the strike zone, and his sprint speed — 23.3 feet per second — ranked fifth-worst in the majors in 2020.
Last year, he began dropping down to one knee when the bases were empty to avoid unnecessary pressure on his right knee.
“It was really tough in the beginning,” Ramos said Monday. “Never in my career was I working behind the plate with one knee on the ground. Right now, it’s a little more comfortable. And that helped me to get those low pitches pretty good in the zone.”
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Ramos allowed 10 passed balls in 2016, five in 2017, eight in 2018, 10 in 2019 and five in 2020. Before the injuries, however, this wasn’t an issue. He was worth a career-best plus-11 defensive runs saved (DRS) in 2011.
Eight years later, in 2019, he produced a career-worst minus-11 DRS. He finished at minus-six in the shortened 2020 season.
To improve his defense, Ramos lost weight — going from 270 pounds to 245 — this offseason. He knows maximizing his agility, considering his age and past injuries, will boost his sustainability. The Tigers are expected to use him as the everyday catcher, so his mind and body will be tested through 162 games.
“He has a little tendency to get a little mad when he doesn’t produce offensively,” Rodriguez said. “One of the things I taught him was, ‘You got to two jobs to do — offense and defense.’ He cannot bring the defense to offense, or offense to defense. If you do that, you’re not going to do the job. He learned that and started to work on it and became a good catcher.
“When he (is) a great catcher, the offensive part of the game that I know he can do comes in place as well.”
Passing down Pudge’s lessons
The Rodriguez-Ramos relationship was strong through the 2011 season because of their friendship and understanding of what the Nationals needed. Although Ramos isn’t ready to take a step back from the starting role, he will likely have a young catcher as his backup.
In some ways, his potential big-league relationship with 26-year-old catcher Jake Rogers will parallel his experience with Rodriguez.
“Those kids, they’re growing up in this job,” Ramos said. “They need to learn. Same with me when I grew up. I got a couple of good guys with big names in baseball, and they taught me how to grow up.”
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Rogers made his debut in 2019, hitting .125 with four homers and eight RBIs in 35 games. He hasn’t returned to the majors since, spending the entire 2020 season at the alternate training site in Toledo.
Hungry to return and stick in the majors, Rogers needs guidance.
And Ramos, armed with a Hall of Famer’s insight, is going to do his best to prepare the Tigers for the future.
“Now I can do the same to the young guys,” Ramos said. “It’s going to be fun to teach them.”
Evan Petzold is a sports reporter at the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.