Star-Ledger: Computer finds Edwar Ramirez

“Fellow Travelers, we have a new catchphrase: “Statistics found him.” I hope you’ll pardon...but I clipped it from ESPN’s Rob Neyer.

If anyone deserves credit for the Yankees’ discovery of Edwar Ramirez, it’s a computer.

“Statistics found him,” Billy Eppler, the team’s director of professional scouting, said yesterday.

...While Eppler looked for players who had been recently released by other organizations, Troy Caradonna—the assistant director of baseball operations in the team’s Tampa offices—checked statistics of the independent leagues.

Caradonna found Ramirez in the United League: 1.07 ERA, 46 strikeouts and 10 walks in 25 1/3 innings for Edinburg (Texas).

“We didn’t send anybody in to look,” Eppler said. “I looked at a few old reports, didn’t see anything (negative), and made a couple of phone calls checking on (mental) makeup.”