Hanley Ramirez's Elite Power Defining His Boston Red Sox Homecoming

Ask Hanley Ramirez, and he might tell you that not only is it possible to go home again, but that it's possible to go home again and hit all the dingers.

And he would know.

Ramirez is one month into the four-year, $88 million contract that he signed to return to the Boston Red Sox, the organization with which he began his career before moving on to the Miami Marlins and the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's been a rousing success so far, mainly due to one thing:

His power.

Ramirez played in his 21st game of 2015 Wednesday night in a matchup against the Toronto Blue Jays, and it featured his leading the Red Sox to a 4-1 victory with a two-run homer off R.A. Dickey. It was his 10th home run of the season, tying him with Nelson Cruz for the major league lead.

Here, it looked like this:

Ramirez's rate stats look fantastic, as he's slashing .293/.341/.659 to give him a .999 OPS that ranks among the top six in the American League.

But nothing is defining his season like his 10 home runs. They're the only 10 extra-base hits he has this year, which reflects what the eye test has to say about Ramirez's early-season performance: He's only interested in hitting the ball as hard as he freakin' can.

Of course, it's not as if Ramirez has never been a power hitter before. He topped 20 homers six times between 2006 and 2014, going as high as 33 in 2008. But for the most part, his all-around athleticism has defined the 31-year-old's career. And he's certainly never been this powerful before, as his current pace puts him on track to hit around 77 home runs.

No, he's not actually going to hit that many dingers. But if you need some convincing that the elite power Ramirez has shown early this year is for real, meet me below the following image.

Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

Though Ramirez's early-season power has been something of a surprise, it's really not a total surprise. One way to look at what he's doing now is to view it as a continuation of work he began in 2013.

With figures courtesy of FanGraphs, check out the progression of Ramirez's isolated power—that's slugging percentage minus batting average—throughout his career:

Data courtesy of FanGraphs.

You can see the massive spike that took place in 2013, a year in which he hit 20 home runs in only 86 games. That year, something changed.

When one looks at data from FanGraphs, it's easy to see that Ramirez suddenly got a whole lot more aggressive that year. And to the naked eye, he did seem to be swinging from the heels on every pitch. Also, it helped that, as he told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times, the left shoulder that he had surgically repaired in 2011 was finally feeling healthy.

As for why that 2013 power outburst didn't continue in 2014, it's fair to chalk that up to injuries.

Per Baseball Prospectus, Ramirez dealt with 12 different nagging injuries throughout the year. That's not counting the aches and pains that might have been caused by his duties as an everyday shortstop, a position that he was never good at to begin with and had no business still playing in his age-30 season.

The Red Sox, of course, granted Ramirez freedom from shortstop when they signed him to play left field instead. Left field is not only less taxing than shortstop, but it's also traditionally a power position. They might as well have issued an order for Ramirez to bulk up and embrace his power as his new livelihood.

Which brings us to something you might have already noticed: Ramirez is looking all sorts of jacked these days.

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

That's no mirage. As John Tomase reported at WEEI.com, Ramirez showed up to spring training at 240 pounds, 15 pounds heavier than his listed weight of 225 pounds. Most of the added weight resided in his chest and arms, the latter of which caught David Ortiz's attention.

"I've been looking at those big-ass arms for a while," he said. "You can't get no bigger than that."

Nobody should need a scientific explanation for how more muscles can lead to more home runs, but it so happens that such an explanation does exist. Alan M. Nathan, a physics professor at the University of Illinois, found that even a 10 percent increase in muscle mass can lead to improved batted-ball speed.

On this note, here's Ortiz with some more thoughts, via Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald:

Ortiz is right. Ramirez is hitting the ball really hard. The eye test confirms it.

So do these figures from Baseball Savant, which show the MLB leaders in average batted-ball velocity as of the start of play on Wednesday:

Rank	Player	BIP	Batted-Ball Velocity
1	Hanley Ramirez	48	98.6
2	Joc Pederson	23	97.5
3	Alex Rodriguez	29	96.9
4	Jorge Soler	29	95.8
5	Carlos Gonzalez	31	95.0

There's Ramirez on top, and by more than a full mile per hour to boot.

So though Ramirez surely isn't going to stay on his current pace and make a run at Barry Bonds' single-season record of 73 dingers, that he's on such a pace is anything but a Chris Shelton-esque fluke. He's hitting the ball harder than anyone, and that's the result of a trend that started in 2013's meeting a physique worthy of the pages of a Marvel comic.

For the Red Sox, the result is they're getting more than their money's worth. And for Ramirez, it's certainly been a happy homecoming.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.

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