Jose Ramirez Is Heating Up For The Guardians

Jose Ramirez is finding his stroke again at exactly the right time of year.

The longtime Cleveland third baseman missed roughly a month of action earlier this season while recovering from surgery to repair a fractured hamate bone in his left hand, an injury that has lingered in the background of an otherwise difficult offensive season for him. Sunday’s series finale against the Athletics offered another encouraging sign that the timing may finally be working in his favor. Ramirez went 2 for 4 in Cleveland’s 1-0 win, part of a stretch that has caught the attention of longtime Cleveland columnist Terry Pluto.

Pluto pointed to the pattern building over Ramírez’s last several games.

“Ramírez had two more hits Sunday. After battling a hand injury (and recovering from hamate bone surgery), Ramírez has two hits in each of his last four games,” Pluto wrote.

That kind of consistency matters given everything Ramirez has dealt with physically this year. The hand injury sidelined him for weeks during the middle of the season, and returning from hamate bone surgery has historically been an adjustment period for hitters trying to regain their timing and power. Four straight multi-hit games late in September suggest that adjustment period may finally be behind him.

For a player with his track record, that timing could not be better. Ramirez is a career .278 hitter with 297 home runs and 1,000 RBI across parts of 14 seasons in Cleveland, numbers that place him among the most accomplished players in franchise history. A switch hitter who has historically caught fire in big moments, seeing him heat up again as the Guardians push for a division title is exactly the kind of development this roster needed.

Cleveland improved to 81-75 with Sunday’s sweep of the Athletics, holding firm control of the AL Central race with six games remaining. If Ramirez keeps stringing together games like the ones Pluto highlighted, he could end up being one of the biggest X-factors for Cleveland’s stretch run down the final week of the regular season.