In many aspects of the game, Harold Ramírez simply doesn’t look like a big leaguer. His 47.5% chase rate ranks 193rd out of the 194 hitters with at least 400 plate appearances this year. Among that same population, his line drive rate ranks in the 14th percentile. Ramírez hits twice as many groundballs as fly balls and has homered in just 2% of his plate appearances, worse than league average. As a DH, he doesn’t provide value with his glove, and in his first two full seasons with Miami and Cleveland, he was worse than replacement level.

Now let’s talk about how good Ramírez is. He has some of the best raw power in the game, once hitting a ball 114.8 mph, something the likes of Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and José Ramírez have never accomplished. He avoids strikeouts at an above-average clip and can make the most of the balls he puts in play as a 64th-percentile runner. Ramírez is one of just three hitters with a batting average above .300 in each of the past two seasons, along with Freeman and Luis Arraez.

I’ve presented two views of Ramírez that could either make him sound like a career minor leaguer or a fearsome offensive force. In reality, he’s somewhere in the middle, with a 121 wRC+ and 1.9 WAR/600 PA since joining the Rays at the beginning of 2022. Ramírez is a man of extremes, placing himself either near the top or the bottom of the league in every skill or statistical category. Many players display outlier offensive profiles – the aforementioned Arraez, for example, is about to win his second consecutive batting title with just 10 home runs. Players atop the batting average leaderboard often make tradeoffs in the power department. But in many ways, Ramírez finds a way to stand out even compared to the standouts. For example, let’s look at the batsmen who chase as many bad pitches as Ramírez. Most are below-average hitters, often rolling over or whiffing on pitches nowhere near the zone. But among the free swingers who are above-average contributors overall, a common trait they share is good power, as hitters with low OBPs have to make the most of the good pitches they put in play to be productive:

Of this group, Ramírez is the only player whose isolated power is worse than the league average of .166, yet he ranks third in wRC+ among the bunch. What he lacks in power among the big chasers he makes up for in his ability to hit for average. Josh Naylor and Bo Bichette are the only other hitters in the table batting above .300; the next closest is Ezequiel Duran’s .277. Most players atop the batting average leaderboard follow a similar formula to rack up hits, consistently smashing line drives and low fly balls that drop in the outfield before a fielder can catch it. But Ramírez again stands out next to his peers in the .300 club:

Most batting title contenders are elite at hitting the ball on a line. Others are pretty good, and even Ronald Acuña Jr. and Shohei Ohtani make up for middling sweet spot rates with enormous home run totals, balls that outfielders have zero chance of catching. Ramírez is a mile below everyone else here, with abysmal line drive and sweet spot rates. So how does he hit .300 in spite of all these factors working against him? It’s been observed that he imparts more backspin on fly balls than average, allowing the ball to carry farther than other hits of a similar launch angle and exit velocity, though without batted ball spin data, it’s impossible to quantify exactly how much this impacts his performance. But Ramírez doesn’t set himself apart from others with his fly balls; rather, it’s the balls that stay on the ground where he truly outperforms his competition:

Ramírez’s numbers on line drives and fly balls look a lot like the rest of the league’s, but he has the fifth-highest wOBA on groundballs. Getting roughly league average production on the worst type of batted ball is quite impressive, yet necessary for someone who hits grounders over half the time. His lack of aerial contact explains the large discrepancy between his raw and in-game power; it’s why someone who can hit the ball up to 115 mph relies on singles to make a living. But not all grounders are created equal. Softly-hit groundballs are a disaster for hitters, easy to handle by infielders. But batted ball results on hard-hit grounders scale up rapidly with exit velocity starting at around the 95 mph mark:

The average hitter hits about 34% of their grounders above 95 mph, but Ramírez has reached that benchmark on 71 of his 172 ground balls, good for a 41% hard-hit rate. He’s amassed a wOBA of .408 on those hard-hit grounders, roughly the same as the full-season performance of Freeman or Matt Olson. Even on the softly-hit groundballs, though, Ramírez has outperformed the abysmal results of his big league peers. Over the past two seasons, his 38 infield hits rank 10th in the league, comprising over 11% of his total hits. For someone of his stature (5-foot-10, 232 pounds), Ramírez absolutely books it down the line; his 4.36 second home-to-first time puts him in company of AL stolen base leader Esteury Ruiz and ahead of Marcus Semien and Xander Bogaerts, who rank above him on the infield hit leaderboard. His 27.9 ft/sec sprint speed is the best among designated hitters, narrowly edging out Ohtani.

Another attribute of Ramírez’s game that allows him to succeed despite not lifting the ball is his ability to crush pitches at the top of the zone, especially four-seam fastballs. As a hitter without much natural loft to his swing, he’s accumulated a run value of -6 against sinkers and changeups, which he’s simply pounded into the ground for outs. On the other hand, his shorter and more downward swing allows him to get to high fastballs, a common weakness for many other hitters.

To quantify hitters’ preferences for hitting one type of fastball over another, I looked at the difference between Statcast run values versus four-seamers and sinkers over the past two seasons, normalizing each player’s difference to the number of pitches they’ve seen. The hitter with the greatest preference for four-seamers is Chas McCormick, who ranks second to Aaron Judge in fastball run value, but is below average against sinkers. Ramírez ranks in the 91st percentile in this stat. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the hitters with the greatest proclivity for sinkers include Cal Raleigh and Cody Bellinger, whose longer swings can lift low sinkers for homers but often struggle to catch up to high heat. Ramírez has been worth +10 runs on four-seamers this year thanks to his excellent damage rate on elevated pitches:

Ramírez has reached 350 plate appearances in each of his four full seasons, but has never qualified for the batting title as an everyday player. The Rays, always crafty with their lineups, have given him about 100 starts per year with a good number of opportunities off the bench as well. While he’s a solid overall hitter, Ramírez absolutely crushes lefties – hitting .368/.408/.498 against southpaws since joining the Rays. He’s gotten the nod in nearly every matchup against a left-handed starter, but even when he’s been benched due to an unfavorable matchup, he has found ways to contribute. Ramírez has 43 pinch-hit appearances in the past two seasons, eighth most in baseball and most on the Rays. In those opportunities, he’s hit .500 with an 1.110 OPS, highest in the majors of any regular pinch-hitter. It should be noted that line comes with a .559 BABIP; he won’t pinch-hit this well for the rest of his career, but in the situations where the team can deploy him best, Ramírez has thrived.

Despite having just three qualified hitters, the Rays are about to enter the playoffs with the best offense in the AL and by far the strongest in franchise history. However far they go this October, Ramírez will be a part of it, either as a starting DH or lefty-mashing substitute. And in a league where seemingly everyone possesses outlier skills or talents, Ramírez has managed to succeed despite doing so far differently than anyone else.