'This is just starting': Ramírez adds to historic run with multi-HR game

SEATTLE -- Agustín Ramírez had enough slumping after just one game.

The Marlins’ No. 4 prospect, whose big league career got off to the kind of start not seen in at least 125 years, had his first off night at the plate Saturday, going 0-for-4 in Miami’s ugly 14-0 loss to the Mariners -- to drop his batting average all the way down to .500.

On Sunday, in the series finale at T-Mobile Park -- which the Marlins dropped, 7-6 -- he turned it around in no time at all, with his first career multi-home run game.

In so doing, he became the first player since at least 1901 to have multiple extra-base hits in three of his first five career games.

“He’s certainly off to a hot start, that’s for sure,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said before Saturday’s game. “The production’s been great. The bat speed, the exit velocities, the quality of the contact -- that stuff was always going to be there. You’re never sure how a young hitter is going to handle the first time being up here. I’ve been as impressed with the quality of the contact as what he’s swinging at.”

That's tied for the lowest launch angle on a home run in the Majors this season, the lowest launch angle by a Marlins hitter on any homer since Jake Burger on Sept. 16, 2023, and matches the fifth-lowest launch angle on a homer to straightaway center at T-Mobile Park in the Statcast era (since 2015).

“You just don’t see that many balls with that type of trajectory going out to that part of the field,” McCullough said. “That shows his strength and the bat speed -- the type of impact that he is capable of.”

In the top of the first inning, Ramírez turned on the second pitch he saw from fellow prospect Logan Evans and lasered it to straightaway center at 105.1 mph with an 18-degree launch angle, sending the ball a Statcast-projected 404 feet in just 4.5 seconds.

Then, in the sixth inning, Ramírez went into majestic mode. Falling behind 1-2 in the count, Ramírez took one sweeper outside, fouled off a second sweeper on the outside corner, then didn’t miss the third, launching a 421-foot moonshot to the second deck above the bullpen.

“I’ve been working a lot at the plate, working a lot with the staff,” Ramírez said via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “Trying to make good decisions at the plate, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

That plate discipline -- combined with contact skill -- is something that McCullough has stressed throughout the week. It’s still very early in Ramírez’s career, and even though the 23-year-old’s 36.4% chase rate entering Sunday was just about his only metric ranking below league average, his 19.2% whiff rate -- like just about everything else -- would rank in the league’s upper echelons if he was a qualified hitter.

“I think that’s what the really good hitters do,” McCullough said. “They have zone control, they have discipline for what they’re going after, and if you layer in the quality and type of contact, that’s a really good recipe for success in the batter’s box. He’s combining the strong plate discipline with quality of contact.”

And Sunday, Ramírez’s quality of contact remained stellar, combined with an average swing speed of 76.1 mph that ranks top among Marlins hitters (minimum 10 swings) since bat-tracking began in the second half of the 2023 season.

Since his call-up on Monday, Ramírez has put 16 balls in play; seven of them have had an exit velocity of at least 100 mph. His second home run had an exit velocity of 108.7 mph. The rookie backstop has hit multiple balls over 100 mph in each of his past four games. He entered the day with an average exit velocity of 94.3 mph, the highest among Marlins hitters with at least 10 batted balls in the Statcast era, though that number did drop a bit -- after the homers raised it -- when Mariners closer Andrés Mu?oz jammed Ramírez for a game-ending groundout in the top of the ninth.

But the two homers did their part to keep Ramírez’s early stats in absurd territory.

Five games into his career, the catcher is hitting .474 (9-for-19) with four doubles, three home runs and five RBIs. Both his average and 1.682 OPS rank third-best in the league (minimum 15 at-bats) since his call-up seven days ago.

“It was a tremendous series,” Ramírez said. “My mentality is to continue. I believe this is just starting.”