'I've been raking against lefties and I look forward to keep doing it'

With the Red Sox starting lefthander Payton Tolle in Game 1, the Yankees loaded their lineup with as many righthandered hitters as possible including rightfielder Heliot Ramos.

Acquired from San Francisco before the Aug. 3 trading deadline, Ramos was needed to balance a lineup that had become too lefthanded with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton out with injuries. And it didn’t start well for him, hitting .1119 with one RBI over his first 20 games including a brutal 0-for-23 stretch.

But things started to turn around with an Aug. 30 home run off Sox lefty Ranger Suarez. In the 18 games since, he has batted .281 with four home runs and 11 RBI.

“When I faced Suarez and I took my first at-bat and it was a walk, I felt pretty good about it,” he said. “I was, like, ‘yeah, this is my time. I'm ready to go.’”

Ramos has never played in the postseason and to say he was excited about it would be serious understatement.

“Who would have thought I would have been here right now? It's crazy that, like, this is happening to me,” he said. “A lot of guys take trades to heart, kind of like in a bad way. . . . But at the end of the day, the New York Yankees wanted me and I'm here to help. I'm loving the experience. I'm loving where I'm at right now.”

For the season, Ramos has posted an impressive slash line of .297/.383/.525.

Asked about what he felt he might do against a Boston team with a lot of lefthanded pitchers, he replied, “This year I've been raking against lefties and I look forward to keep doing it.”

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.