TORONTO – Two breaking balls aside, Robbie Ray kicked ass. Really, there’s no other way to describe what he did to the Tampa Bay Rays over six innings Saturday evening, beating them down with a fastball that sat 95.1 m.p.h. and topped out at 98.3 they simply couldn’t counter.
A sloppy slider that Mike Zunino yanked over the left-field wall in the second and a bite-less curveball that Mike Brosseau hooked to a similar spot, only deeper, in the sixth were his only blemishes, but they erased the 3-0 lead provided to him by Randal Grichuk’s first-inning homer.
That shouldn’t take away from the left-hander’s impressive display of raw power, although it did prove costly when the Toronto Blue Jays unravelled in a messy two-run eighth that secured a 5-3 victory for the Rays.
Jordan Romano, fresh off the injured list, couldn’t locate his fastball a lick and walked the first two batters he faced in the eighth inning. Then, with the Blue Jays playing in on the corners anticipating a sacrifice bunt, Manuel Margot ripped a fastball at 109.1 m.p.h. right through Cavan Biggio’s legs at third base, cashing in the go-ahead run.
A strong relay from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to Bo Bichette to Alejandro Kirk cut down Brosseau at the plate, but Margot was cashed in by a Kevin Kiermaier groundout for a 5-3 lead. The two-spot came without the help of a hit, making it an excruciating way to win a ballgame.
“In a close game, if you come in and you walk a couple of guys, you're looking for trouble,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “But you've got to give him credit. He got the ground ball to get a double play and we didn't make the play. … We couldn't turn it.”
The error against Biggio was his fifth of the season – all at a hot corner that almost seems jinxed for the Blue Jays right now. Friday night, Joe Panik made his second error while playing third base while Saturday in the fifth, with the Blue Jays playing a four-man outfield and Marcus Semien over at third to cover, he threw away the relay to first after fielding a Zunino grounder.
Biggio was playing on the edge of the infield turf when he whiffed on Margot’s smash. The speedy outfielder doesn’t have a sacrifice bunt since joining the Rays last season but said manager Kevin Cash gave him the sign on the first pitch and then took it off.
“After that, my mentality changed and I just went in there to make hard contact,” Margot told Tampa Bay media.
The Blue Jays continued to defend against the bunt threat even after Margot took a first-pitch ball and a called strike, cutting Biggio’s reaction time on the rocket. “The ball was right at Biggio,” said Montoyo. “You never know, they could have easily bunted because that's what Margot does, he bunts a lot. They didn't do it.”
Adding to the frustration is that the Blue Jays squandered an opportunity in the top half of the frame, when Semien popped out with men on first and second, and after Gurriel Jr.’s infield single loaded the bases, Ryan Thompson struck out Kirk to end the inning.
Andrew Kittredge stranded a one-out Biggio double in the ninth to close things out, as Grichuk’s three-run shot off opener Brent Honeywell Jr. was the only damage a Blue Jays lineup still running hot and cold could muster.
The pending return of George Springer – now Tuesday at the earliest when the Washington Nationals arrive in Dunedin for a two-game mini-series, after Montoyo confirmed he won’t be active Sunday – should help in that regard.
Springer played again at the alternate site behind Nate Pearson – who allowed five runs, four earned, in 2.2 innings – and the star outfielder “ran hard,” said Montoyo. “He looked good. He's happy with his at-bats and how we ran, so that's good news.”
Also good news is the way Ray rebounded from a six-walk start last week against the Kansas City Royals, when he still managed to throw five shutout innings.
Against the Rays, he didn’t walk a single batter while striking out nine. Ray generated 18 swinging strikes and underlining how dominant his fastball was, 11 of the 13 misses he got in the zone were on four-seamers.
Via Baseball Savant
“I had a ton of confidence in it,” said Ray. “I felt like I was able to move it on both sides of the plate, up, down, in and out. It definitely felt like it was coming out really good today.”
Of his 94 pitches, 68 were four-seamers, complemented by 15 curveballs, nine sliders and two changeups, including the two ill-fated breaking balls.
“The first one was just poor pitch selection,” said Ray. “I'd been beating (Zunino) with fastballs that whole at-bat and I just kind of got in a groove, me and Kirk did, and instead of shaking off to the pitch that I really wanted, I thought I could probably bury this slider and he'll swing over top of it. But it's probably just poor pitch selection on my part.
"The second one (to Brosseau) is just bad execution. I threw back-to-back curveballs, first one was a ball, if I can execute that pitch better than I did then it works out better in my favour.”
The Blue Jays' offence could help by giving their pitchers more room for error, but the outing demonstrated how Ray can overwhelm an opponent with force in a fashion Hyun-Jin Ryu and Steven Matz can’t, prompting Montoyo to draw positives from the show of dominance.
“That really makes me feel good,” he said. “Now, you have Ryu, you have Matz pitching well. Robbie Ray was good in spring training, of course then he got hurt and he's been good since he got back. He was really good.”
