Ray bounces back to shut down Cardinals
ST. LOUIS – If there were no radar gun, there would have been no way to know. Robbie Ray had stretches of dominance. He had bouts of wildness. These are normal occurrences in his outings.
He also finished his evening with a line that looked like many of his others over the past 12 months. He was highly effective, and his team won in no small part because of his performance.
The Diamondbacks’ 3-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals gave them a franchise record-tying six wins in their first seven games. It was the second day in a row in which they won despite a modest output from their offense.
And it was evidence that Ray can survive with a fastball that doesn’t grade out as “plus” on the scouting scale.
Six days earlier, Ray was hammered by the Colorado Rockies, giving up three home runs in five innings. Nothing can send off alarms – even false ones – more than a frontline pitcher getting hit hard with diminished stuff in his season debut. He averaged just 92.7 mph that night, down almost two ticks from his average last year.
The fastball was no better on Thursday, averaging 92.5 mph, according to Brooks Baseball. Ray said he wasn’t concerned last week and that he still isn’t, and he only halfway acknowledged that getting outs with less velocity gave him any reassurances.
“It’s still early in the year, and it was 50 degrees,” Ray said. “I’m not really worried about it. But to be able to get outs and work down in the zone today was good. I’m not really concerned about it – and it was freezing today.”
In six innings, Ray gave up just two hits. He allowed one run. He struck out nine. He walked five, getting himself into a handful of jams. But he worked his way out of them every time. All of this fit within the realm of anticipated possibilities for Ray, who last year walked at least four batters nine times and struck out at least nine 14 times.
He said he was battling his mechanics throughout the night, specifically his posture. He said he hunched over too often in his delivery, causing an ugly chain reaction. That makes him tumble down the left side of the mound, which makes him have to overcorrect, which makes him fire his fastball up and out of the zone to his arm side.
He also thought his mentality might have contributed to the lack of control.
“(I was) trying to make a pitch too nasty or trying to throw a 100-mph fastball in the second game of the year,” he said. “That’s not my game. I do a lot better when I can command in the zone with my fastball at 95 percent. I was just trying to do too much.”
Ray started off the final three innings of his outing by issuing leadoff walks, but ultimately managed to get his mechanics in order enough to avoid major damage. That was particularly true in the fourth, when Yadier Molina yanked an RBI double down the left-field line, but Ray recovered by striking out consecutive hitters to escape a second-and-third, one-out jam.
“That’s a credit to Robbie,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “I don’t think he has a back-down mentality. He stood on his stuff when he really needed it and made pitches when he had to.”
Looking back at the Rockies start, Ray realized he barely threw his curveball. He went to it far more often against the Cardinals, using it on 31 of his 98 pitches, per Brooks Baseball. This was no accident. He wondered if he had perhaps become too predictable against the Rockies.
“They could take the slider and know that a fastball was coming,” he said. “But when I have the curveball, it’s an extra pitch to where they have to respect it, too.”
Ray’s outing occurred in a place that conjured bad memories.
It was here at Busch Stadium last July where Ray was struck on the head by a 108-mph line drive by the Cardinals’ Luke Voit. Ray suffered a concussion and needed three staples in the left side of his head.
But he said those memories didn’t weigh on his mind much on Thursday.
“I kind of just put it behind me,” he said. “It’s something that happened. And it’s over.”