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Terrerobytes: Third spot's the charm for Alexei Ramirez

Plus: Gold Glove voting gets statistical boost, Conor Gillaspie wrestles with his batting average, and Addison Reed's in good shape

Hannah Foslien

Alexei Ramirez isn't anybody's idea of a typical No. 3 hitter, but an odd fit may have turned into a season-saver.

Since dropping down one spot in the order after the Alex Rios trade vacated the position, Ramirez is hitting .319/.327/.574 with three doubles and three homers in 11 games (49 plate appearances), after hitting just one homer over the first 112 games of the season.

He's more than willing to embrace this change:

"I feel really good in there," Ramirez said. "For me, that’s a special place to hit. You have the opportunity to expand. You can hit far. You can move the runner. You can bring run. You can single. You can do a little bit of everything, which I like."

Granted, this could merely be a convenient cover for his struggles elsewhere in the lineup, but it's still nice to Ramirez have a month that doesn't look the same as his others:

Split G PA H 2B 3B HR BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 25 95 25 6 0 1 4 14 .281 .316 .382 .698
May 27 114 29 5 0 0 6 10 .271 .316 .318 .634
June 27 124 34 6 0 0 1 20 .288 .295 .339 .634
July 26 114 31 10 0 0 3 7 .279 .298 .369 .668
August 18 81 26 5 0 3 2 2 .338 .350 .519 .869

Then again, if you're somebody who looks at place discipline numbers first, he's had a wilder year than the rest of his numbers suggest.

Terrerobytes

Addison Reed's velocity has been down 1-2 mph all season compared to 2012, so I would take any recent fluctuations with a grain of salt. Plus, he's been way more effective in his sophmore season because his slider has expanded his pitching zone. My favorite number -- his out-of-zone contact rate is only 51 percent his year, down from 72 the year before.

It does seem like Conor Gillaspie is hitting better than his line, but there's little better than this line:

Gillaspie admits he’s probably a little down on himself more than he should be.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo...

This is nice to see -- Rawlings decided to let its award evolve with the times by adopting a defensive metric that will account for 25 percent of the vote. Joe Maddon thinks its impact could be greater than that, as at least one manager will use the SABR Defensive Index to inform his thinking.

While Robin Ventura might expand his rotation or plan for his young pitchers to skip a start, John Danks wants to get as many cracks at September as possible.

Chris Cwik looks at Chris Sale's changeup and says that he's using it to great effect when he needs to get back into the count.