Voodoo Sabermetrics - Manny Ramirez

Voodoo Sabermetrics reminds us that our love for the team includes our love of individual players. We usually have a favorite superstar hitter or pitcher or both. But what about those guys that you just… like? Maybe someone who pinch hits or steals a base now and then. Maybe an aging vet who is like an extra coach in the dugout. Rather than judge everyone by their stats, we’re going to use unique categories and scoring methods to check out baseball’s characters.

Our High Voodoo Council are:

Jack Cobra from 3manlift.com Neighbor Quotient and Scrappiness
Texas Gal from Ladies… Hottness and Behavior
Uncle Sunil from Hurricanes Are For Drinking Atomic Mass and Exposure
Gary Gnu from The GNUru Fantasy Sports Clutchness and Chuck Norrissness
Sooze from Babes Love Baseball Jollyness
TC from Mr. Thursday’s Curious Mechanism Appearance and Quotability
Extra P. from The Extrapolater Name Quality (including nicknames)

If you read my earlier introductory post, you’ll notice some categories have changed. Each member of the panel chooses a unique rating system for his or her specialty, and since I don’t want to limit anyone’s creativity in scoring, I’m not even going to award an overall score. Each category is judged on its own merit, so that no one category can float or sink some mythical overall lovability number. If our panel wants to rate a guy’s scrappiness by awarding him dog bones, so be it. Negative numbers may also come into play.

To start things off with a bang, we’re going to look at one of the most enigmatic superstars in the game today.

Manny Ramirez

Name: Manny was christened Manuel Aristides Ramirez upon his birth in the Dominican. I actually think that name has a lot of character, but it definitely doesn’t fit this kid, so Manny was probably the way to go. His nickname “Man Ram” makes him sound like a porn star or an Ultimate Fighting champ, and is emblematic of how boring nicknames have become in this current age of baseball. Just shortening a guy’s given name doesn’t give him any unique flavor at all. I’ll take a “Pronk” over a “Man Ram” any day.

A sad 2 out of 10, simply for having a nickname at all.

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Atomic Number: It’s hard to come down hard on Manny Ramirez for his personality, which is usually described in terms reserved for people under 5’4″: flighty, flakey, bubbly, light, carefree, and perhaps even air-headed.Any ill effects on a clubhouse caused by his shenanigans – yeah, I said shenanigans – are usually minimized by the fact that the man can just flat-out rake. When you routinely hit 30 home runs, and drive in 120 runs, people tend to like you, no matter what you do.

Yet it’s hard to imagine that a person whose behavior has inspired an entirely new phrase, “Manny being Manny,” to be entered into the lexicon, is universally loved and adored. It’s far more likely that Manny wins most of the personality clashes due to his status on the team. Add to it the fact that by simply being Manny, Ramirez has been responsible for more “will he be traded?” and “what did he do this time?” drama than just about anybody in the game, and you’ve got a pretty toxic element brewing.

At his status, if Manny Ramirez were good for team chemistry, there is no way that the Red Sox would explore trading him every season. Which is why his atomic number is 54, the number for Xenon. With his personality, Ramirez’s corresponding element must be gaseous, and highly useful. “Xenon gas is used in making electron tubes, stroboscopic lamps, bactericidal lamps, and lamps used to excite ruby lasers for generating coherent light”. Yet Xenon compounds are considered to be highly toxic, and as such it is shipped in isolated, regulated containers. Sounds like Manny.

Exposure: Manny Ramirez’s behavior is so thoroughly analysed that it inspired an everyday phrase, “Manny being Manny,” yet we hear far more about Manny Ramirez, and far less from him. If we are to believe the descriptors that people use about Manny, he may be the quirkiest player in the league since Yogi Berra.

It would be far more interesting to hear Manny’s take on current events, than it is to hear most media members’ takes on the current state of Manny. If he is crazy enough that PTI covers it when he urinates behind the Green Monster during pitching changes, or when he tries to sell a grill on ebay, what kind of hilarity comes out of his mouth?

What does Manny Ramirez even sound like when he speaks? Where are all of his national endorsement deals? Certainly Manny Ramirez could sell sporting goods, bats and shoes, perhaps even Red Bull, Ritalin, or some other form of attention deficit drug. I would love to see him in his own reality TV show, perhaps even called “Manny Being Manny.” For a person of his status, I think he is a bit underexposed.

On a scale of 1-10, I’m giving him a 6.

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Neighbor Quotient: 8 – Manny’s already shown he can be a good neighbor in my book by helping his neighbor try to sell his grill on eBay. Loses two points out of ten because he’s always trying to leave the Red Sox, so he’s never happy where he’s at.

Scrappiness Quotient: (-831) – I can’t think of a player in MLB that’s less scrappy. When I think of prima donna, I think of Manny being Manny…

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Hottness: 2
He’s not hideous, but his weird hair predilections, flat butt and loose pants do not make an attractive package. I don’t want to encourage him with anything higher than a 2 (and what does he care, he’s already got a hot Brazilian trophy wife).

See the Man-Fam at right, click for larger image.

Behavior: Orange (High) (on the Terror Alert Level)
“Manny being Manny” can mean anything from “will give you a wedgie” to “will fake an injury to skip a game”. He’s a solid High orange on the terror alert scale, for his non-stop will-he-or-won’t-he trade dance, if nothing else.

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My numerical scores will correlate to the alcohol contents of various beers. In case you care, here’s the scoring system.

Appearance – Manny dons some of the nattiest dreads and unkempt stubble in the majors. Oh, sure, it might not look attractive or even pleasant, but that hungover look makes him among the most distinctive to ever play the game. 18%

Quotability – Manny says two things: “I want to be traded” and “I love it here.” He’s reviled and beloved for what he does, not what he says. I actually give him an extra point for mistaking O.J. (Simpson) for (Chad) Ogea during The Chase of the White Bronco. 4.5%

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Manny’s Jollity: On the large scale that always seems to be tipping, Manny is a Red Buttons. That’s pretty damn jolly.

(editor’s note:  Kudos to sooze for remembering Red Buttons.  In case you don’t, here’s video of him roasting Frank Sinatra from god-knows-how-long-ago. Gotta love insult comedy from the era before political correctness was invented. Watch to the end. Red is so jolly he can’t even finish his own routine.)

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Clutchness: Manny’s level of clutchness is entirely dependent upon what your definition of “clutchness” is. Since the word clutchness has yet to find a place within American sports vernacular, the GNUru can mold the meaning to facilitate the GNUru’s evil agenda.

Taking a statistical approach, one could tally Man-Ram’s game winning RBI and walk off home runs but that would make too much sense. A better approach is too look at one’s level of reliability when it counts. In that category, Manny fails miserably- so much so that the phrase “Manny being Manny” has entered the lexicon of Boston Red Sox fans. Any player that has a built-in excuse for a lack of enthusiasm and/or concentration, mental lapses, and dedication to the team, is not a clutch player.

*GNUru Clutchness Meter:* “2″

Borrowing from TC’s scale, that makes Manny a Yuengling Premium Light – 3.1%

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So there you have it.  You can get drunk off of Manny’s appearance (and apparently his hot Brazilian wife has), but his quotability and clutchness will leave you bloated and nauseated the next day.  He gets a massive negative number for his scrappiness, but you wouldn’t mind living next door to the guy.  He keeps Red Sox fans in a perpetual state of high terror, but he can roast the Chairman with impunity and “excite ruby lasers to generate coherent light”.  I don’t think David Ortiz can claim that.

In the end, we’ve arrived back where we started.  It’s just “Manny Being Manny”.  What else can you say?  But we love him for it.

We have suggestions for Lou Merloni and Joel Zumaya as our next voodoo dolls, but the c\krewe and I will have to put our heads together and decide if we have the chops to handle historical players, or if we want to stick to current major leaguers.  We may have to form a veterans committee, and I already know a couple of people who would fit on that board verrry nicely.

Thanks for stopping by, see you for the next installment!