Seattle Mariners: Robbie Ray vs. ghosts of M’s past sins
Chris Phillips
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The Seattle Mariners signed reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray this offseason. However, this isn’t the first time they’ve acquired a big named pitcher after a career year in the offseason. Will this time be any different than the previous one’s?
Back in the pre-lockout days, the Seattle Mariners signed reigning American League Cy Young award winner Robbie Ray. The expectation is that he’ll lead the Seattle Mariners rotation in the 2022 season. The order of who follows him is up for discussion. Right now we know Logan Gilbert will at least be fourth with Chris Flexen and Marco Gonzales pitching before.
The career year pays off
Ray is coming off a career year. Which always raises the red flag of “buyer beware.” Too often a player, in any sport, has a career right before they hit free agency which skews his value. The player parlays that success into a big contract and then goes back to his career norms. If you remove Ray’s 2021 season, his career norms are 4.26 ERA, 4.12 FIP, 1.384 WHIP, 140 strikeouts, 57 walks, and 18 home runs surrendered over 120 innings. That’s hardly worth the five years and $115M he got from Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto.
We can’t just remove last season from the equation. It happened and it was a tremendous one at that. As a result, Ray’s career norms dropped to a 4.00 ERA, 4.04 FIP, 1.32 WHIP, 230 strikeouts, 81 walks, and 28 home runs surrendered over 184 innings. For me, that makes the deal a little easier to digest. I certainly want Ray, during his tenure with the Seattle Mariners, to be closer to his last year than the career norms.
There has been criticism of the Seattle Mariners – Robbie Ray partnership. In short, he’s practically a two-pitch pitcher, utilizing his fastball 59.4 percent of the time and his devastating slider 30.8 percent. The remaining 10 is made up of his curveball (6.0 percent), changeup (3.0 percent), and it’s a rare day when he busts out the sinker (0.2 percent).
What are the M’s getting in Ray? Two names come to mind from the Seattle Mariners’ past and they aren’t happy memories; Erik Bedard and Cliff Lee. Ironically, all three of these hurlers are lefties.