Manny Ramirez‘s time in Taiwan appears to be over. And, just like the rest of his enigmatic career, Ramirez’s next step is unclear.
On Tuesday, the Manny Does Taiwan blog began reporting that Ramirez had been taken off the active roster of the EDA Rhinos, Ramirez’s team in the Chinese Professional Baseball League, and was set to leave the country by the end of the week. The blog cited its own sources and eventually a Yahoo! report from China — we’ll have to take their word on that one, since we don’t know Chinese.
The EDA Rhinos later put out a press release (again, in Chinese) announcing that Ramirez had indeed been removed from the roster and was set to leave the country on June 21. However, the reasons that Ramirez left the team are still unclear.
As Hardball Talk points out, the speculation surrounding Ramirez is that he may be joining a Japanese team in Nippon Professional Baseball, which is of a considerably higher quality than the CPBL.
During Ramirez’s time with the Rhinos, the team saw attendance increase 412 percent, while TV ratings increased 221 percent.
