Things haven't been great for Heliot lately.
Heliot Ramos is not having his best stretch of baseball.
The San Francisco Giants' left-fielder has had problems in the outfield. He's also made mistakes on the basepaths.
It's been enough to wonder whether the Giants would bench him, temporarily, to try and get his head right.
That's not happening, though. Ramos is leading off Wednesday afternoon.
Giants manager Bob Melvin explained the choice to keep Ramos in the lineup with this answer to reporters: “He said, ‘How am I going to get better and help my team if I don’t play?’”
Ramos opened up Tuesday night with his own thoughts.
“All that I have in my mind is that I don’t want to mess up,” Ramos told reporters. “And I think that’s a wrong thought… I just feel like I have been messing up a lot and I’m in my head. I just have to let it go and get better every day.”
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The Ramos blunder Tuesday night came after he led off the bottom of the first inning with a walk.
Ramos immediately stole second base.
The problem came a couple batters later, when Matt Chapman hit a high infield popup. The umpires called an infield fly, but the baseball dropped.
Ramos got caught in no-man's land, and the Pirates nabbed him with a tag to end the inning.
“Just a mental error,” Ramos explained. “Trying to do too much, overthinking. I messed up. That’s the only thing I can say about it. It’s been happening a lot. I’m just trying to get better, do better every day, every time. Trying to work on it, even on my defense. It hasn’t been the best. I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t know what to do. All I’m doing is working every day, trying to fix everything.”
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Ramos had also run into a tag out at third base over the weekend on a grounder directly to the third baseman that he simply didn't wait out.
He's being honest about the struggles, though.
“It’s just a mental battle,” Ramos says. “When I started the season, I felt like I’m the best. I’m the best out there, I’m doing great on defense. … And then when you have a couple of errors, because they do happen, but whenever they’re back-to-back they get in my head. I feel like I’ve cost us the game. It just feels like, ‘Damn, I have to get better.’ I just have to get better and put that pressure on myself.”
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