Ray works around traffic in loss to Royals

When you look at Robbie Ray’s line from Sunday’s start against the Royals, one of the numbers doesn’t seem to fit.

Ray walked six batters, tying a career high, and needed 92 pitches to get through five innings. He struck out just three and allowed four hits, but somehow, Ray left a zero in the run column. Calling this “five shutout innings” barely scratches the surface, but Ray found a way to dance out of danger over and over again, handing a tie over to his bullpen before the Blue Jays eventually fell, 2-0.

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“I was getting a little too fast with my front side,” Ray said. “The turn that I have is tricky sometimes, because if I get too fast going down the mound with my front side, I feel like that’s when things start to get out of whack. Those last two innings felt a lot better.”

There are two Robbie Rays, and more than any other pitcher on this roster, it’s easy to see early in an outing whether Ray has his best stuff. When Ray is on, he looks like the power lefty who posted a 2.89 ERA in 2017 with the D-backs, striking out 12.1 batters per nine innings. When he’s off, he can look like the 2020 version of himself, when he led baseball in walks by a comfortable margin.

Pitchers with Ray’s raw talent are always one pitch away from covering up the mistakes, though. That’s why the Blue Jays acquired him in 2020, betting on his upside. Besides, Ray has only walked six batters two other times in his career, and both of those came within his final three starts before the Blue Jays traded for him last summer.

This is as much a mental challenge as it is physical, though. It takes a certain mindset to grind through with your B- or C-level stuff, and it’s something Ray has developed.

“I think that’s good news for us because he used to get rattled when that happened,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “Now, mentally, he feels so good that he can get out of trouble. We didn’t have trouble for the whole game except for that one inning, but Robbie was amazing. He kept us in the game with [almost] 100 pitches. That was huge, how he made the big pitch every time he had to.”

So much of Ray’s success hinges on his big fastball, but it was his slider that he felt most comfortable with on Sunday. He also threw 15 changeups, which is well above the norm for Ray, to help keep hitters off of his fastball. If he’d tried to shove that fastball across despite not having his best feel for it, Ray would have found trouble, but his secondary pitches helped to keep him afloat.

There’s also the challenge of Ray making adjustments to his delivery in-game. This is hard enough to do in bullpen sessions, let alone facing live hitters in Major League games, so Ray had to find the right balance.

“You can feel it, but in the moment you’re just trying to put up zeros,” Ray said. “Getting early guys on the bases, that was my main focus, just to grind it out, put up zeros and give us a chance. Those last two innings, it started to click. I’m just going to build off of that.”

T.J. Zeuch didn’t have Ray’s luck when he trotted in from the bullpen for the seventh inning, though. Zeuch’s first three pitches went for a single, a two-run home run off the bat of Salvador Perez, then a double, quickly handing the Royals the 2-0 lead they should have had much earlier in the game.

Not even the Blue Jays’ best pitching effort would have been enough, though, as their lineup managed just two singles and three walks. Beyond Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, this lineup has been struggling, and while the eventual returns of George Springer and Teoscar Hernández will help, this group is capable of so much more.

The Blue Jays hope to turn this around quickly, too, with the division-leading Red Sox on deck after Monday’s off-day. Over the long season, this lineup will need to cash in on days where their starter grinds one out to give them a chance.