Remember last spring training, when Hanley Ramirez showed up with like 25 extra pounds of muscle? He was bursting out of his Under Armour and his neck was enormous and so were his arms and here just look at this swole af dude:
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It made sense at the time: he was moving to left field, he wanted to hit some dingers, etc. And it even worked early on!
Well, okay, it worked early on at the plate. It turns out when you add 25 pounds of muscle to your frame that you're not quite as agile, and being able to move is semi-important for a left fielder. Then he got into the habit of trying to murder every baseball, his body didn't hold up through the full season, and so on.
So this time, Hanley is going back to the body that did him so many favors in the past. And look, he's already got it:
Hanley is here pic.twitter.com/Dzc2RzzTrb
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) February 17, 2016
He's much, much leaner than he was at this time last year, just as the Red Sox asked him to be. Hopefully he'll also be much more effective on both sides of the ball, because the Sox need Hanley thriving in the middle of their lineup.