Williams weighs in on Ramos' injury and his workout regimen

Wilson Ramos will need seven to 10 days to recover from a right hamstring strain, so the Nationals have placed their oft-injured catcher on the 15-day disabled list and will suggest that he modifies his workout routine to incorporate more running in hopes of preventing future hamstring injuries.

"He got an MRI this morning and officially it's a Grade 1 strain of his hamstring," manager Matt Williams told reporters this afternoon in San Francisco. "It's the opposite side of his previous injury, but it's the same side that he had the surgery on his knee. It's going to be a few days at least. You know, if it was a couple of days and he'd be fine, it'd be one thing. But our doctor looked at it, studied it and thought it would be a week to 10 days anyway. So just to make sure he gets taken care of and he's back in 15. The thing we don't want is for him to get out there and play and do it worse, and then you're looking at 30 days."

He sustained the injury last night, running from first to second base on his second double of the game, and was removed as a precaution with what then was termed hamstring tightness. Ramos was upbeat after the game and didn't think the injury would be serious, but that was before today's re-evaluation.

Ramos has a history of hamstring injuries, having spent two tours on the DL last season with left hamstring problems. He also spent time on the sideline earlier this season after having surgery to remove the hamate bone in his left hand, an injury that occurred on opening day. But Williams stopped short of saying that Ramos needed to tone down his aggressiveness on the basepaths to prevent future injury.

"I don't think you can stop that," Williams said. "Guys play the game and they read whatever's going on out there. If there's a ball hit in the gap and he's on first and we can have him score, he's going to score. Recently, he's hit a lot of them though. It's probably a little bit of a function of him being on the shelf for so long with his hand, trying to get back in the mode of playing, and then a lot's been dumped on him. We've tried to give him days off to take care of that part of it. On the bases, he's had to go first to home a few times, he's hit a lot of doubles. ...You can tell him, 'Hey, don't run,' but that's not the way we want to play."

Ramos said earlier this afternoon that he would consider changing his workout regimen to incorporate more work to strengthen his hamstrings, and Williams seemed on-board with that idea.

"There may be some modification to do as far as him making sure he's doing plenty of running," Williams said. "You squat so much, sit back there for five or six innings and all of a sudden have to run home to second or first to home. It's not easy. We'll modify it a little bit just to make sure he's getting enough running in."

Sandy Leon has landed in San Francisco after a cross-country flight from Triple-A Syracuse and will be added to the 25-man roster for tonight's game. That means infielder/outfielder Kevin Frandsen won't have to serve as the emergency catcher, though Frandsen caught a bullpen session this afternoon.