Horacio Ramirez Released

The Horacio Ramirez era is over. KJR reports that Ho-Ram has been released.

My understanding (though I can't find a link) is that he'll go on waivers. If a team claims him, they'll get to pay his $2.75 million salary (unlikely). If no team picks him up, Ramirez will have this difficult choice to make:

a) Go to the minors, and continue to collect his salary.

or

b) Become a free agent.

That would seem to rank with Raef Lafrentz' player option as one of the easiest decisions in world history.

Just to recap, the Horacio Ramirez trade netted us one of the worst seasons in the history of baseball, and we gave up Rafael Soriano, who threw 72 innings for the Braves last year and recorded 70 strikeouts. Terrible, terrible trade. And to think I defended it at the time. Whoops-y-daisy!

UPDATE: As it turns out, I'm completely wrong about the above...Geoff Baker says Ramirez is straight gone, and the M's pay him 1/6 of his salary, or about $450K.