Spring training games seem meaningless, except for those who try to make the team

Fort Myers, Fla. -Spring training exhibition games do not count and do not matter, and that reality is confirmed in dozens of ways, both subtle and obvious.

Additional tickets do not reproduce, the equipment prefer ties with the use of unplanned launch. Calls to the bases cannot be challenged, because the available video varies very widely. Star players rarely go to the road, and most regular customers of major leagues play only five or six tickets until the last week.

Yes, the games mean almost anything more than a semi-regular practice for players. Well, except for players for those who mean absolutely everything, the difference between a lucrative career in baseball and several years of bus travels to stages of small towns.

“It is easy to say that the games do not matter if you have a contract (guaranteed),” said the reliever of the twins Erasmus Ramírez. “But in my case, each launch is important because I am being judged. So I have to concentrate every time I step on the field. “

Ramírez can know better than anyone in the twin camp, because he has a notable streak on the line. The 34 -year -old boss, whose career began in 2012, is in the camp with his sixth different team in the last seven years, each time without a place in the list of 40 men.

However, he has launched in the largest in each of the previous six seasons, and is anxious to do so seven using a twins uniform at some point in this summer.

“It is a fight for a place (list) every year. I was on a list of the opening day from 2012 to 2018, but since then, only in 2023 ”with the nationals, Ramírez said. “But if you give me a chance, I do what I can do. I was in my house (as the camp approached), and now I have the opportunity to play again in the elderly. This is work. I’m still working. “

Ramírez is one of the 57 players in the camp, a crowd that must be controlled at 26 per opening day. Many of the 31 who will not make the list of major leagues already know, because they are younger young people here to experience the life of the major leagues. But a handful of players are silently dedicated to an anxious competition, competing for a job that has not been promised, one that pays $ 760,000, minimum, for six months of work.