After making adjustments to Japanese baseball as a hitter that few foreign players could match, Alex Ramirez told Kyodo News last month about the different adjustments he had to make as a first-year manager.
Between skepticism over his entering the job without having coached at this level and a poor start to the season last year, Ramirez did not have an easy transition into the managing ranks. Yet, he did adjust, coping first with his team's inability to hit the ball.
Through the end of last April, the team's batting average on balls in play was .268, 34 points below the Central League average. The team wasn't scoring and on May 3 was in last place, eight games out of first.