Class A, Cleveland ... Cooperstown? The journey of Lindor and Ramírez

The pregame fungo drill would begin with routine plays for Lake County’s infielders, allowing them to find their rhythm while scooping up the ground balls off the bat of manager Dave Wallace. But once that rhythm was established, Wallace would pick up the tempo and begin to challenge the Captains players with smoked shots to their right and to their left.

It was a game of elimination. Boot a ball, and you’re out. Make the play, and you stay in.

Inevitably, in that summer of 2012 in Single-A, Francisco Lindor and José Ramírez would be the last men standing.

“Next thing you know,” Wallace recalls, “the whole team is on the field watching them.”

Lindor and Ramírez would egg Wallace on, imploring him to hit the ball harder and to test their talents with bounding balls up the middle and down the line. And with each magnificent stab and on-target throw, the two teammates raised the stakes for one another.

“They each used the other one to help fuel their work ethic, their drive to be better,” Wallace said. “Each one wanted to be the best player on the field.”

It worked.

These two switch-hitting infielders both came up in the Cleveland system, exceeded their rookie limits in MLB within a year of each other (Ramírez in 2014, Lindor in 2015), led Cleveland to an American League pennant in 2016 and simultaneously began to enjoy All-Star selections, Silver Slugger salutes and MVP support.

“It was a good partnership in the infield,” Ramírez said through interpreter Agustin Rivero, “because we understood that we wanted the same thing. We wanted to win.”

Added Lindor: “We competed against each other in a good way. It was, ‘Let’s go get this done.’”

They’ve both done a lot.

And now, they are both quietly sneaking up on Cooperstown cases.

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, it’s notable that the Hall of Fame is still relatively light on Latino players. But this year, with another pair of stellar seasons, Guardians third baseman Ramírez, a native of the Dominican Republic, and Mets shortstop Lindor, a native of Puerto Rico, both appear to be on track for eventual selection.

Their career numbers tell the story of simultaneous stardom (stats through Sept. 18):

Lindor, who is in his age-30 season and was traded to the Mets prior to the 2021 season, has received four All-Star selections, three Silver Sluggers, two Gold Gloves and a Platinum Glove. Ramírez, in his age-31 season (he turned 32 this month) and a career-long Clevelander, is a six-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger honoree.

To put their WAR marks into context, the average career bWAR for a Hall of Fame shortstop is 67.7, while the average for a third baseman is 69.4.

So while neither player has won an MVP, they both have a shot at Hall of Fame selection if they can remain healthy and productive deep into their 30s.

“The coolest part,” said Terry Francona, who managed the players when they came up in Cleveland, “is I don’t think they’ve changed one iota. They may own more expensive cars, but, when the game starts, they’re baseball players. Some guys turn into entertainers. [Expletive] that. We’re baseball players. And if you play baseball the right way, it’s entertaining. These guys do that.”

Lindor and Ramírez were both blessed with speed, range and quick hands. But to watch them for any length of time is to be struck by their instincts, how they put themselves in position to make plays before they happen, how they know when to be aggressive on the basepaths and how they exude both joy and swagger.

“How they play the game,” said Wallace, “is very fundamental and very focused, and that is not easy to do.”

While they’ve shared so much and performed so similarly, Lindor and Ramírez took very different paths to this point.

Lindor’s family uprooted and moved to the Orlando, Fla., area when he was 12 years old so that he could pursue better developmental opportunities than what was available in his native Puerto Rico. He attended Montverde Academy, a prestigious private high school, where he attracted the eye of scouts, and he was taken by Cleveland with the eighth overall pick in the 2011 MLB Draft. He received a $2.9 million signing bonus and was already a celebrity by the time he opened the 2012 season in Lake County at age 18.

“He came with all the labels,” Wallace said. “It was the first-round, golden-boy type of thing. And what you saw, from the very beginning, was that he was usually the youngest player on the field but also the best player on the field. And when I say best player, that’s not only the most talented, but the best player. He ran hard, he was engaged on every pitch, he had all those intangibles. And because he’s bilingual, he really did a great job of connecting the team. He had leadership skills.”

The Captains struggled in the first half that year. They were 31-38 at the break. But over on Cleveland’s short-season rookie ball club in Mahoning Valley, there was this short and stocky, 19-year-old middle infielder who had signed for just $50,000 as an amateur free agent in his native Dominican Republic in November 2009 and was now making unexpected noise with his bat.

Ramírez was not touted as a top prospect. He had to earn his at-bats in the pros. But this was nothing new to him. He grew up poor, playing with a glove that was too tight on his hand, on a square of dirt filled with rocks and weeds. And he played to support his family. He signed at 17, which is old for a Latin American amateur, after impressing a Cleveland scout at a showcase event where he had served as a fill-in for an absent player.

So while Lindor was an alpha dog, Ramírez was an underdog. But Ramírez carried himself -- then and now -- with a confident strut, and he began to command attention on the field. Cleveland was so impressed with Ramírez’s 4-for-11 showing with the Scrappers that the organization moved him up to Lake County after only three games.

Mahoning Valley manager Ted Kubiak called Wallace to give him a scouting report on his new player.

“Wally,” Kubiak said, “I’m sending you the pennant.”

He was right.

With Lindor and Ramírez forming a formidable 1-2 punch atop the lineup, the Captains cruised to a 40-30 record to win their division’s second-half title in 2012.

From there, Ramírez made a rapid ascent, skipping over Triple-A to make his debut as a September callup in 2013. In his first game, he was a pinch-runner. The next two years, he bounced between the Majors and Minors. He was initially cast as a utility player and hit sparingly, giving little indication of the star-caliber performance lurking within.

Lindor, meanwhile, methodically moved up the ladder one rung at a time. And when he was brought to the bigs in June 2015, he was there to stay -- an instant starter and an impact player. He finished second to fellow shortstop Carlos Correa in the AL Rookie of the Year voting.

But in 2016, it became clear that both players were worthy of a starting and starring role. While Lindor earned his first All-Star selection, Ramírez stepped in for an injured Michael Brantley in left field and turned the opportunity into a showcase. He wound up playing four different positions that year (left field, third base, second and short) and performed ably at them all while slashing .312/.363/.462.

That year, Lindor finished ninth in the AL MVP voting, and Ramírez 17th.

“As they were starting to get established, everybody wanted to talk about Frankie -- and I get it, because he had the personality, the smile, the talent,” Francona said. “But I would tell people, ‘Don’t forget about that guy next to him.’ He was quietly becoming a really good player.”

From 2016 through 2020, Lindor and Ramírez were one of the best teammate tandems in MLB. In that span, they both ranked in the top 10 among all players in extra-base hits -- Ramírez fourth with 325, Lindor eighth with 306.

“We went as they went,” Francona said.

Off the field, the two never gave off best-buddy vibes. But they weren’t enemies, either. They were simply two players confident in their abilities and fixated on winning games.

“I think it was more like a friendly competition,” Ramírez said. “It was never this negative, ‘I want to be better than you.’ It was just to show, ‘I can do it like you or better.’ It made us better as a team.”

Alas, the powerful pairing ended when Cleveland, unable to reach an extension agreement with Lindor, traded him to the Mets in January 2021. Soon after, Lindor set a new shortstop standard with a 10-year, $341 million extension with New York. A year later, Ramírez signed a seven-year, $141 million deal that keeps him in Cleveland through 2028.

“We had different mentalities in terms of where we wanted to be,” Ramírez said. “But it doesn’t make a difference, because [Lindor] is such a hustler that, wherever he was going to be, he was going to be a good player.”

Though Lindor was essentially a league-average bat in his first season with the Mets, he was a top-10 MVP finisher in 2022 and ’23, and this year he has challenged Shohei Ohtani for the NL MVP by posting a career-best 136 OPS+ and sparking the Mets to contention with his performance out of the leadoff spot.

“I’m not surprised to see what he’s doing,” Ramírez said of Lindor. “He was meant to be that type of player.”

Ramírez, meanwhile, has taken on the solo spotlight with Lindor gone and remained one of the most reliable run-producers in baseball. His 137 OPS+ over the last four seasons is even better than what Lindor has produced in this MVP-caliber year.

“I’m proud of the person he’s become,” Lindor said of Ramírez. “He comes from very little and goes from not even getting much mention to becoming the face of the franchise -- someone who, at the end of his career, is going to have a statue in Cleveland and his number will never be worn again.”

From their time trying to outdo each other in pregame drills in Lake County to the present day, in which they are leading their clubs to October, Ramírez and Lindor have walked different yet parallel paths.

Those paths might one day converge in Cooperstown.