Robbie Ray turns 33 today.
Ray came to the Jays in trade for Travis Bergen (who found his way back to us, but is out of baseball now) at the deadline in 2020.
He wasn’t great down the stretch in 2020, with a 4.79 ERA in 5 games, 4 starts. He had a hard time finding the strike zone. He walked 14 in 20.2 innings, but he also had 25 strikeouts. You could see the talent, but he had to figure out how to control the zone.
Pete Walker worked hard with Robby, and in 2021, he had one of the best seasons of any Jays starter in recent times. He was 13-7 with a league-leading 2.84 ERA. He also led the league in strikeouts with 248 home runs. And he went from a 17.9% walk rate to 6.7%.
He won the Cy Young and was 15th in MVP voting, and got us to the playoffs. Unfortunately it was a two-and-out in the playoffs. Ray was the loser in game one, working out of the pend, giving up a run in three innings of work on Randy Arozarena triple.
Now why we didn’t start the Cy Young winning pitcher is a question. But Matt Shoemaker started. From the Recap:
I’m a fan of leaving in the pitcher who is doing well. Shoemaker was at 35 pitches. I figured they would give him up to 60ish pitches.
I understand it is a fine line, leave a guy in while he is pitching well, but you never know when that will end, but I figure Matt had another inning in him (at least).
In comes Bob Rae (yeah I know Robbie Ray).
Of course he gives up a triple to the first batter he sees. I say triple but I don’t understand why our outfielders refuse to cutoff a ball before it gets to the wall. I get that it is easier to follow the ball to the wall and pick it up, but that should have been a double. Next year, if we want playoffs again, we need our outfielders making these plays.
After a strikeout, Ray bounced one in the dirt, it went through Danny Jansen and the Rays had a run. I did think that Danny should have blocked it. With a runner on first, you have to do all you can to block pitches in the dirt.
After that, Ray was terrific. 3 innings, just that one hit (the triple), 1 walk, and 5 strikeouts. A terrific outing.
And, if you want to be fair about pulling Shoemaker early, the Jays got 6 innings of 1 run ball from Shoemaker and Ray, you can’t hope for better than that. This was the plan and it went well.
A.J. Cole followed and gave up two runs. I have no memory of A.J. Cole being a Blue Jay, but he had a 1.31 ERA in 6 games after pitching in 24 games the year before.
Shoemaker missed most of the regular season because of an ACL tear suffered when he took part in a rundown (pitchers should never be part of a rundown early in the season. In two season with the Jays, Shoemaker made 11 regular season starts. The reasoning behind starting him instead of Ray is a mystery. Matt made five starts in August, missed a month, and made one start near the end of the season. And he gets the game one start.
And we couldn’t hit Blake Snell.
After the season, the Mariners signed Ray to a five-year, $115 million contract. It didn’t work out well for the Mariners. He was good in 2022, with a 3.71 ERA in 32 starts and then made one start in 2023, suffered a torn flexor tendon and missed the rest of the season.
Before this season, he was traded to the Giants. He made seven starts for them with a 4.70 ERA.
Happy Birthday, Robbie.
Otto López turns 26 today.
He was a prospect for the Jays (he made it to number seven on our prospect list). He was a utility who was error-prone but had a decent bat.
The Giants picked him up before the start of this season and then lost him to the Marlins off waivers. He did pretty well with the Marlins, hitting .270/.313/377 with 6 home runs in 117 games.
Happy Birthday, Otto.