Guardians star Jose Ramirez reflects on career as he sets games record
Jose Ramirez will break yet another record when he plays in his 1,620th game with Cleveland. Here's why it's so important to him.
CLEVELAND — It took Jose Ramirez a few years of playing every day to feel comfortable in a major league uniform. Fast forward about eight years, and the moment the April 6 game hits official status (after the fifth inning), no player will have worn a Cleveland baseball uniform more times than the Guardians' switch-hitting, always-strutting All-Star third baseman. As of April 6, Ramirez will own the Guardians franchise record for games played with Cleveland at 1,620, passing Terry Turner on the club's all-time list.
It is perhaps the most fitting record Ramirez holds or will hold in the near future, a list that will only continue to grow as he wreaks havoc on the Cleveland record books . Nobody has embodied Guardians baseball better than Ramirez over the last 10 years. And considering the team-friendly deals he has now signed multiple times — the last one guaranteeing he'll remain in Cleveland until he's roughly 40 years old — arguably nobody has ingratiated himself to the Cleveland fanbase in a better way.
"I think among all the records, I feel that's one of the most important because it kind of resembles what I wanted to do with this team," Ramirez said through a team translator. "That was my ultimate goal, to play as long as I could here and be able to be part of those records that are happening now. " Jose Ramirez stats Ramirez has come a long way from a prospect in 2013 who was originally used mostly as a pinch-runner.
It doesn't mean that's all the Guardians ever envisioned for him, but nobody could have seen the decade-plus that would follow. Since Ramirez became a full-time starter in 2016, he's been named an All-Star seven times , a Silver Slugger six times and finished in the top five in MVP voting six times. His name is littered throughout the Guardians record books .