CLEVELAND -- Someday, there could be a statue of José Ramírez here, outside the ballpark on the corner of Ontario Street and Carnegie Avenue. His Guardians teammates will tell you there should be one, without a doubt, whenever Ramírez is no longer playing inside Progressive Field.
You won’t hear much disagreement from the Rays about Cleveland’s franchise player.
“He's on a Hall of Fame trajectory,” starter Griffin Jax said. “He's an incredible player. One of my favorites to watch, actually.”
“It's crazy that we can probably all acknowledge he's a top 10 player in the entire world,” added starter Drew Rasmussen, “and yet I think he's the most underrated player in all of baseball.”
Ramírez has been sharing a spot at the hot corner in the American League Championship Series with a particularly big fan of his: Rays star Junior Caminero. The two Dominican third basemen once played for the same organization. They now have the same agent, Rafa Nieves, and have grown to become good friends.
“Junior is my brother,” Ramírez told reporters, including MLB.com’s David Venn, in Spanish. “It’s good banter. He’s my brother. I respect him a lot. He’s a very good player.”
Obviously, the feeling is mutual.
“You look at his name, and you certainly put it together with Cleveland, and you just think of a legend,” Caminero said through interpreter Kevin Vera. “For the last handful of years, ever since he's been pretty much a big leaguer, he's been one of the best third basemen in the league. He’s a great ballplayer at the end of the day, and we get along really well.”
Caminero was 10 years old when Ramírez debuted for Cleveland on Sept. 1, 2013. When Caminero signed with the Guardians as an international amateur in July 2019, Ramírez was already a two-time All-Star with two of his six top-five finishes in the American League MVP voting.
Ramírez has been named an All-Star seven times, and perhaps it was appropriate that his decision to opt out of last year’s Midsummer Classic opened the door for Caminero to become the AL’s starting third baseman. The 23-year-old earned his starting spot in the All-Star Game outright this season and seems likely to land the Rays’ highest-ever finish in the AL MVP voting.
The way Caminero sees it, he still has a long way to go before he enters the same stratosphere as someone like Ramírez.
“I'm just starting off here in my tenure at the big league level, but he's one that always deserves the respect and has played at such a great, elite level for 13, 14 years,” Caminero said. “Credit to him for just doing it on a day-to-day basis and being just one of the best third basemen in the league.
“I look at myself, and hopefully I'll get there.”
Indeed, that’s exactly the way Caminero wants people to view him a decade from now -- if they don’t already. He followed up last year’s 45-homer, 110-RBI performance by batting .276/.360/.524 with 42 homers, 101 RBIs and 5.7 bWAR while starting all 162 games at third base this season.
It’s superstar-in-the-making stuff. Especially when you consider that Ramírez was only just establishing himself as an everyday player when he was Caminero’s age. Rays manager Kevin Cash was around to witness his emergence as Cleveland’s bullpen coach in 2013-14.
“As a young player, [he] was a shortstop, third-base, second-base profile, [hit for] a lot of contact, and I know there were some early struggles,” Cash recalled. “And there was a debate: Is he going to be able to stick?
“He's definitely stuck.”
But the reason you might as well figure out how to best depict Ramírez in bronze? He’s stuck around.
Ramírez initially signed a seven-year extension with Cleveland in 2022, then further signaled his intent to finish his career with the Guardians in January by signing another seven-year extension that will run through 2032, the switch-hitter’s age-39 season. He won’t simply be remembered as one of the best players of his era. He’ll be remembered as a franchise icon.
“Hearing [Guardians manager Stephen Vogt] talk about how he's made the choice to be there multiple times, I think that speaks volumes about José Ramírez,” Cash said. “I think it speaks volumes about the organization as well.”
Across the field, you’ll find a player who would love to mean just as much to his organization, to be for Tampa Bay what Ramírez was, is and always will be for Cleveland.
“That's what you work toward. You work every single day to hopefully get your name written in the history books with wherever you're at,” Caminero said. “I certainly want to do that here with Tampa Bay, so it's super motivating to see José doing that for himself. … Hopefully the fanbase and the organization remember my name for a long time to come, and hopefully I produce the results that deserve that respect.”