Red Sox outfielder Hanley Ramirez has the kind of talent to morph into whatever sort of hitter you want. At various points in his career, he has been one of the best baserunners in the league, one of the best power threats, and a batting title contender. His talent is so immense and wide-reaching, it's hard to put a ceiling on what he can do.

So no, I'm not particularly surprised that he has nine home runs in the month of April. Sure, he only hit 13 last season in 128 games, but Ramirez is capable of pretty much anything with the bat. Still, when you dig into the numbers Ramirez is putting up so far, what immediately jumps out is how atypical his season has been so far. Let's see what he's doing, and how he is doing it.

This has been a month of contradictions for Hanley with the bat. His swinging strike rate has jumped from 8.2 percent in 2014 to 9.8 so far this season, as he has started chasing more pitches out of the zone. Despite this, he has cut his strikeout rate to 12.6 percent, the lowest of his career by far.

He has a .295 batting average, but just a .233 BABIP. This is the case, in spite of the fact that he leads the majors in averaged batted-ball velocity, per BaseballSavant.com. How can a player hit the ball harder than anyone in baseball and still have such a low BABIP? Probably because he hasn't put all that many balls in play; only 14 of Hanley's 23 hits have actually been in the field of play, with the rest going over the fence and thus not taken into account in those calculations.

Usually, when we see someone has a low BABIP, we assume they have to turn things around eventually, and Ramirez's batted-ball suggests that should be the case. Of course, you could look at it in another way. 45 percent of Ramirez's balls in the air have gone over the fence so far this season, a truly absurd number; his previous career-high was 21.1 percent in 2013. And he's had a bit of luck in this regard, as only five of his nine home runs would have been out in all 30 parks, per HitTrackerOnline. 

What we're seeing with Ramirez right now is a more extreme version of what has been the story of Jose Bautista's career. Despite putting an absolute hurting on balls, Bautista has consistently dealt with low BABIP's. Part of this is the fact that such a high proportion of his balls in play go over the fence, automatically removing them from the BABIP equation.

We should assume moving forward that Ramirez will start to see more of his groundballs and line drives -- which collectively make up 52 of his 69 batted balls -- will find green grass rather than leather gloves. We should also assume a smaller share of Ramirez's batted balls will go over the fence; that rate, which has hovered between 3.5 and 7.9 percent previously, is all the way up to 13.0 percent.

In the video above, Al Melchior argues that Ramirez's BABIP is a good example of why he might be a buy-low candidate. And, that BABIP will almost certainly improve moving forward. However, we'll also almost certainly see fewer of his batted balls go over the wall. The end result might end up being more hits -- singles, doubles and triples -- but at the expense of his power.

Is Ramirez a buy-low candidate, then? Yes and no. Assuming current trends continue, there's reason to believe he can keep hitting this well, if not this way.

The end result, in other words, might not be too different from what we've seen so far. The process -- the path -- will be different, but I would expect Ramirez to end up in largely the same place he has been so far. He should end up north of a .300 average, with a bunch of RBI and runs scored. And, with nine home runs already banked, he has a good chance to hit a career-high even with regression. It shouldn't come as any suprise, but he is a very, very good hitter, and his strange April only confirms it.