Results tagged ‘ Aramis Ramirez ’
8/6 About last night …
Some notes from Friday’s 4-3 win over the Reds:
* Starlin Castro has scored a run in a career-high seven straight games. It’s the longest streak by a Cubs player since Ryan Theriot also scored in seven straight Aug. 9-16, 2010. The last to score in eight or more consecutive games was Derrek Lee, who did so in nine straight Sept. 7-16, 2009.
* Castro now has 42 multi-hit games, the most by a Cubs shortstop since Theriot had 51 in 2009. The single-season high for a Cubs shortstop is 58, set by Theriot in 2008.
* Tyler Colvin ended an 0-for-19 skid at Wrigley Field with his home run on Friday. Eleven of his 24 career homers have come at Wrigley. All four of his career hits against the Reds’ Mike Leake have been home runs.
* Aramis Ramirez recorded his 248th double as a Cub, and is seven shy of passing Wildfire Schulte for 14th on the franchise all-time list. Ramirez is hitting .373 with 15 runs, seven doubles, nine homers and 19 RBIs in his last 20 games.
* The Cubs have hit 12 homers in their last four games, the most since also hitting a dozen Sept. 19-23, 2007.
* The Cubs have opened August 5-0 for the first time since they went 6-0 in August 1969.
– Carrie Muskat
7/31 Extra bases
Some Cubs notes to pass the time as we wait for the Trade Deadline to pass:
* The Cubs now are 33-23 when they score at least four runs, good for a .589 winning percentage. When they score three runs or less, they’re 9-42. Saturday’s game was the fifth time since the start of June that they’ve scored more than four runs and lost the game.
* Ryan Dempster will make his 347th appearance as a Cub on Sunday night. That moves him past Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown” into 10th for appearances in franchise history.
* Aramis Ramirez heads into the final game of July with nine home runs and 23 RBIs. He has nearly matched the rest of the team combined for home runs in July. The rest of the Cubs have hit 10.
* James Russell’s scoreless streak ended on Saturday at 14 1/3 innings. That’s the fifth longest streak by a Cubs lefty reliever since 2000. Russell has a 1.69 ERA in 33 relief outings in which he’s thrown 1 1/3 or fewer innings per appearance.
* Geovany Soto posted his first RBI since July 23 on Saturday, and first multiple RBI game since June 30.
* Pitching probables for Cubs’ next series vs. the Pirates:
Monday: Carlos Zambrano (7-6, 4.59 ERA) vs. Paul Maholm (6-10, 3.16 ERA)
Tuesday: Randy Wells (2-4, 6.16 ERA) vs. Kevin Correia (12-8, 4.24 ERA)
Wednesday: Matt Garza (4-8, 3.99 ERA) vs. Charlie Morton (8-6, 4.04 ERA)
Thusday: Rodrigo Lopez (2-3, 4.40 ERA) vs. James McDonald (7-5, 4.17 ERA)
– Carrie Muskat
7/29 Ramirez not going anywhere
Aramis Ramirez isn’t going anywhere this year. On Thursday, the third baseman said he was willing to consider a trade but on Friday, he repeated his earlier stance, which is that he will not waive his no-trade protection.
“I think I was misunderstood yesterday,” Ramirez said about his comments after Thursday’s Cubs’ game in Milwaukee that seemed to leave a window open. “I haven’t read the paper … but the way it came out was that I wanted to leave and I was ready to go somewhere else and that’s not the case.
“What I tried to say yesterday was I talked to Jim [Hendry, general manager] a couple weeks ago and we’re on the same page,” Ramirez said. “He wants me here and I want to stay here.”
Ramirez has 10-and-5 rights, which are 10 years in the Major Leagues and five with the same team. That gives him the right to veto any deal. Back on July 18, Ramirez said he would do just that if Hendry came to him with a possible trade. At that time, there were reports that the Angels were interested.
“We knew there would be some teams interested in my services and [Hendry] asked me [earlier this month] what I wanted to do and I said I want to stay here and he said, ‘Good, I want you here,’” Ramirez said on Friday.
– Carrie Muskat
7/29 Will Ramy go or won’t he? Who knows?
The agent for Aramis Ramirez told FOXSports.com that the Cubs third baseman does not intend to waive his no-trade protection before Sunday’s Trade Deadline. Ramirez told reporters after Thursday’s game against the Brewers that no one from the Cubs front office has approached him about any possible deals. He has 10-and-5 rights, and would have to approve any deal. Would he change his mind? “We’ll see,” Ramirez said.
Agent Paul Kinzer, however, gave a different version.
“He doesn’t want to go anywhere,” Kinzer told FOXsports.com after talking to Ramirez. “It didn’t come out the way he meant it to.”
As a player with 10 years in the big leagues and five with the same team, the third baseman can block any trade. He maintained two weeks ago that he didn’t want to leave Chicago because of his family. His conversation with reporters after Thursday’s game had a different tone — but his agent said “nothing has changed.”
“He said if they go young, he would do it,” Kinzer told FOXsports.com. “But he doesn’t want to leave Chicago. He isn’t going anywhere. ‘Ramy’ has never wavered as far as wanting to stay in Chicago. If he had his way, he would sign an extension and stay right there.”
Ramirez’s contract with the Cubs ends this year, and the team has a $16 million option for 2012. That option would become guaranteed if he is traded. Kinzer said Ramirez would want the option dropped as a condition of any trade, enabling him to become a free agent at the end of the season.
– Carrie Muskat
7/28 Ramirez on trade talk: “We’ll see”
Aramis Ramirez has maintained that he doesn’t want to leave the Cubs but on Thursday, the third baseman said no one from the front office has asked him if he’d be willing to accept a trade. And instead of saying he didn’t want to leave Chicago, Ramirez said: “We’ll see.”
“When you’re 20 games under .500, there are going to be changes,” Ramirez said Thursday. “Something’s not right. You can’t point to anything — you can’t point to the pitching, offense, defense. I guess that’s the [general manager's] and the front office’s job. Of course there will be changes because we haven’t played the way we’d like to. We’re 21 games under .500 so there are going to be changes.”
The Cubs took the first step before Thursday’s game when they dealt Kosuke Fukudome to the Indians and called up Tyler Colvin. Ramirez is a 10-and-5 player, and can veto any deal. Now that he agrees with the concept of change, has he changed his mind?
“Nobody has come forward to me from the team to say, ‘We want to trade you,’ or this or that,” Ramirez said. “It’s only [discussed] in the media.
“Nobody has talked to me about if I’m wiling to waive my no-trade clause,” he said. “It’s only in the media speculation that ‘This team wants Ramirez’ or the other team. Coming from the guys upstairs, the people who make the decision, I haven’t heard from anybody.”
So, would he be willing to be traded?
“Nobody wants me, man,” Ramirez said. “They want good players. Nobody wants me. They come to me with a trade, we’ll see, but nobody has talked to me about it.”
There probably are a few teams who would be interested in a third baseman who is batting .293 for the season, and nine homers and 22 RBIs this month. But Ramirez recently said he wanted to stay in Chicago because of his family.
“That’s not a secret,” Ramirez said. “Everybody knows that. But I also understand this is a business. I don’t know which way they want to go. If they’re looking to rebuild, I can’t fit in. We’ll see.”
– Carrie Muskat
7/23 Extra bases
Alfonso Soriano just needed a day to clear his head. He hit his first home run since June 19 on Friday, and said part of the problem was that he was thinking too much about the team’s struggles.
“The way we lose, the way we play, sometimes I think about the team instead of thinking about me first,” Soriano said. “Sometimes those things affect me mentally. The day off [Thursday], I said, ‘I have to control my situation. I cannot control the whole situation.’
“Sometimes you try to control the whole situation and mentally I get tired,” he said. “Now, I just think about me and see the team and how it plays but I have to think about what I can do to help the team win.”
His homer snapped an 0-for-18 skid. Soriano hit .265 in June but was batting .186 (11-for-59) so far in July.
“Sometimes it’s very hard, the way we play, to keep your mind strong,” he said. “That’s the difficult part of this game, the mental part.”
* Aramis Ramirez has held the cleanup spot in the Cubs’ lineup most of his career but was bumped up to the No. 3 spot and is producing. In 19 games batting third, he was hitting .324 with eight homers and 19 RBIs. In 65 games batting fourth, he hit .291 with eight homers and 32 RBIs.
“Knock on wood, day in, day out, it’s not like he takes three games off,” Mike Quade said of his third baseman. “He’s been not just good but consistently good and hitting in big situations. He’s what you need in the three-, four-hole and especially if you’re not producing a lot of runs, whatever he can give you is good.”
Ramirez has been hot, batting .358 this month with eight homers and 20 RBIs. The Cubs have been a litte sluggish in eight games since the All-Star break, batting .242 with seven homers and 23 RBIs.
* Carlos Marmol struck out two batters in the eighth inning, which was a good sign.
“That was the guy I know,” Quade said Saturday.
Expect Marmol to be used in a save situation next time.
* The Cubs want to see if they need Rodrigo Lopez this weekend before announcing the starting rotation for the upcoming series against the Brewers, which starts Tuesday. Because of off days on Thursday and Monday, the Cubs didn’t need a fifth starter and Lopez was assigned to the bullpen. One pitcher who will face the Brewers will be Ryan Dempster, who has a 15-3 career record against them.
– Carrie Muskat
7/22 Extra bases
With Friday’s win over the Astros, Carlos Zambrano now is 5-0 with a 1.62 ERA in his last eight starts against Houston at Wrigley. He has 16 wins against the Astros.
* Aramis Ramirez is batting .378 with 25 runs, eight doubles, 13 homers and 27 RBIs in his last 26 games since June 24. He has 247 doubles, seven shy of tying Wildfire Schulte for 14th on the team’s all-time list. He also hit his 231st homer, and now is tied for sixth on the team’s all-time list with Gabby Hartnett.
* Alfonso Soriano’s homer was his 15th and ended a 0-for-18 skid. It was his first since June 19. Has he been pressing?
“Not really,” Soriano said. “I’ve been thinking too much about the situation. We expected to play better and I think I was playing with a little frustration. It’s good we had a day off yesterday and I tried to not think about the situation and tried to do my job.”
* The Cubs should top 2 million fans on Saturday. They have drawn 1,993,067 so far to Wrigley Field in 54 home dates.
– Carrie Muskat
7/18 Cubs quote of the day
Aramis Ramirez on the way things have been going for the Cubs:
“It seems like we find a way to lose ballgames,” Ramirez said. “Sometimes I feel like the other team doesn’t beat us, we beat ourselves. You’ve got to stop that. If you want to win ballgames, you’ve got to get it down and be professional. This is the Major Leagues, it’s not a learning experience. You have to get the job done.”
– Carrie Muskat
7/18 Extra bases – UPDATED
Aramis Ramirez doesn’t plan on leaving the Cubs this year. He repeated on Monday that he would invoke his 10-and-5 rights and void any deal presented to him. Ramirez has 10 years in the big leagues, and five with the Cubs. Fox Sports reported the Angels were inquiring about Ramirez prior to the July 31 trading deadline.
“I’m at the same point I was at two weeks ago, three weeks ago,” Ramirez said. “Right now, I’m not interested in any trade.”
The father of two young sons, Ramirez said he didn’t want to relocate because of his family.
“It is my family consideration,” he said. “If I was single and by myself, then I’d move anywhere and be in a hotel for the last two months. It’s too tough with my family. I earned the right to be in this position and it’s my decision.”
* In his last 22 games since June 24, Ramirez has batted .373 with five doubles, 11 homers, 23 RBIs and 22 runs scored. On Saturday, he hit a three-run homer, giving him 229 for his career with the Cubs. He’s two shy of tying Gabby Hartnett for sixth on the team’s all-time list.
* Carlos Marmol may be back in action Monday. Mike Quade said Marmol, who was given two days off to try and fix his mechanics, might be available. It all depends on whether pitching coach Mark Riggins and bullpen coach Lester Strode feel the right-hander is ready. Would Marmol be used in a save situation?
“It would depend on the situation and I’m not sure I’ve settled on that yet,” Quade said. “I would like him to get the most out of his down time and he has so far. If they feel good about it, we’ll be good to go.”
* Carlos Zambrano and Kerry Wood rank second and third on the Cubs’ all-time strikeout list. Big Z has 1,522 strikeouts, second most behind Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, who fanned 2,038. Wood is third with 1,436 Ks, recently passing Charlie Root (1,432).
* The Cubs Inbox will be back on Thursday. Have a question? Send it to CubsInbox@gmail.com, and include your name and hometown.
– Carrie Muskat
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