Reviewing Robbie Ray's Underwhelming Start to His Mariners Career
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On November 29, 2021, reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray signed a five-year, $115 million contract with the Mariners that contained an opt-out after the third season.
While many fans expected Ray to continue to perform as a Cy Young-caliber pitcher, he has severely underwhelmed thus far. His ERA sits at 4.52 through June 14, paired with discouraging peripherals to boot. Through 13 starts, this is not where many Mariners fans expected him to be.
So what has gone wrong?
Off the bat, the expectations for Ray shouldn’t have been for him to be an ace, let alone a repeat Cy Young contender. Although it is always easy to predict regression, his best season before last year was in 2016 and 2017 when he put up back-to-back 3.3 fWAR efforts. In his Cy Young season, he put up 3.9 fWAR.
For reference, if one were to take Logan Gilbert’s current fWAR pace and scale it to the 190.1 innings Ray pitched last year, Gilbert would be on track for a 4.4 fWAR season. And given Gilbert’s innings per start this year, he looks to poised to land somewhere in the 180-200 range.
Ray was the 25th-ranked pitcher in terms of fWAR during his Cy Young season, so while he was really good, he was more of a quality No. 2 pitcher instead of a bonafide ace.
It is worth noting that fWAR is park-adjusted, meaning that the context of Ray pitching many of his home games at less pitcher-friendly ballparks in Dunedin and Buffalo is considered in the calculation. The expectation with Ray was that his home run to fly ball rate would benefit from pitching in T-Mobile Park, but that has not been the case up to this point as it currently sits right in line with his career average at 15.7 percent, which is far above the 2021 MLB average of 10 percent.
Ray has struggled with keeping the ball in the park and at this point, it is more than safe to say he has a problem giving up home runs instead of it just being a case of him being “unlucky.” It is also safe to say that Ray got very lucky last season with his unsustainable 90 percent left-on-base rate, meaning that 90 percent of the batters who reached base against him failed to score (the MLB average is usually around 71 percent).
The thing with Ray has always been that, while he will give up home runs, he will make up for it by striking out batters. This year, he has struck out 25.8 percent of the batters he's faced, which is above-average but below his career levels of 29 percent and last year’s 32.1 percent.
It seems as though Ray’s stuff and location are ticking down this year. His Stuff+ has dropped from 98.7 last year to 97.3 this year, while his Location+ has gone from 102.2 to 98.4. Consequently, his Pitching+ has decreased from 102.5 to 97.5.
Given that the quality of the pitch and its location are the only things a pitcher controls, Ray has taken a big step back in terms of throwing difficult pitches for batters to hit. His primary pitches, the slider and fastball, have yielded worse results this year in terms of nearly every metric, including run value, xSLG and xwOBA, while experiencing decreased spin rates and velocity. His walk rate has also regressed from 6.7 percent a year ago to 9.1 percent this year, which is still below his 10.2 percent career average.
In summary, Ray is giving up more home runs, striking out fewer batters, walking more and throwing fewer quality pitches. Mariners fans should not hit the panic button just yet, however, as there is still plenty of time for Ray to improve.
Ray’s velocity has been trending in the right direction, his strikeout-to-walk ratio is above-average and his called strike plus whiff rate is still an MLB-average 27.9 percent. Plus, he seems to have found something with his revived two-seam fastball, which generated 27 strikes, including 12 called strikes and whiffs, and five groundball outs on 45 pitches during his seven-inning scoreless outing against the Red Sox on Sunday.
