Shaken Ramirez Confirms Trade, Says Marlins His Family
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - A clearly shaken Hanley Ramirez met reporters Wednesday morning and confirmed that he has been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, part of a multiplayer trade, the second big deal in as many days for the disappointing Marlins.
Ramirez, who has played for the Fish for 7 years, said he was surprised by the decision, only the second time in his career that he's been traded.
"Last night, I couldn't sleep knowing I was going to leave Miami," he said.
"They're always going to be my family, you know, it's one of the hardest days of my life for me and my family," Ramirez said. "It's painful, but sometimes you just got to keep your head up and move forward."
He thanked the team for recognizing his talent and for giving him a chance in the Majors.
"They just told me sometimes you have to make some changes, it could be good for you and it could be good for us and I agree with that. I'm not mad or nothing. At the end of the day it's just business, and you do your best to improve."
SEE RAMIREZ'S FULL COMMENTS
The Dodgers will also get reliever Randy Choate while the Marlins will receive pitcher Nathan Eovaldi and a minor leaguer.
"These are tough trades," said Marlins President Larry Beinfest. "but when you underachieve at the level that this team has underachieved and not won at the level we expected it to, we talked about a restructuring and this is part of it."
He said the team's discussions about restructuring had always included Ramirez, who had been hitting just 246.
"He meant a lot for this organization," Beinfest said. "He was an uber-player."
Beinfest expressed puzzlement about Ramirez's lack of performance, and said the decision was made to move on and give RamIrez the chance to make a fresh start in LA.
"Are we giving up on the season? I'm going to leave that up to you guys, you're certainly going to characterize it however you want; we don't feel that way. We weren't winning with the group we had, and we want to make changes," Beinfest said.
SEE BEINFEST'S FULL COMMENTS
"We move forward. We're going to play again in a couple of hours, and we're going to try to win ballgames."
Beinfest said the team had been trying things and hoping for change, but could see no evidence that the losing ways were going to improve. What he said could not happen was more of the same.
"We didn't see it just clicking. We were waiting for it to click, waiting for May to happen again. And we just didn't feel like it was going to happen."
So they made changes. When asked if players should be wondering if more changes are coming, his reply was."They should be wondering."
"You have to make a tough call. We made a tough call. And whether this team is going to catch fire, it still may. We still have some really good pitching. We have some really good talent on this team. We expect that it could, but we didn't feel it was going to happen with this current group so we went ahead and made changes.
He said the Marlins may still make more changes by the trade deadline in 6 days.
A day after the Marlins sent pitcher Anibal Sanchez and infielder Omar Infante to the Detroit Tigers for pitching prospect Jacob Turner and two minor leaguers, Miami traded with another playoff hopeful.
The 28-year-old Ramirez is hitting .246 with 14 home runs and 47 RBIs, far from his big season in 2009 when he hit .342 with 24 homers and 106 RBIs. The All-Star shifted from shortstop to third base this season to make room for newly acquired Jose Reyes.
Ramirez and the Marlins have fallen short of expectations this year. Miami lost 4-3 to Atlanta on Tuesday night and dropped to 45-52.
The Dodgers lost at St. Louis 8-2 and are 2½ games behind NL West-leading San Francisco. Los Angeles got off to a terrific start this season, but hit a skid and fell out of first place.
