Robbie Ray, Toronto Blue Jays (photo by Jeffrey Hayes via Wikimedia) (1)
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.
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.
So, a quick painful reminder of one of the worst Seattle Mariner trades. In 2008 the Seattle Mariners, under the direction of GM Bill Bavasi, sent Adam Jones (their number one prospect), left relief pitcher George Sherrill, minor league pitchers Chris Tillman, Kam Mickolio, and Tony Butler for Bedard (and no one else). Jones went on to be a five-time All-Star and four-time gold glove. The following season, Sherrill had 31 saves and went to the ASG. Tillman wound up having four good seasons, becoming an All-Star once.
Bedard was coming off a season where he finished fifth in Cy Young voting. He averaged just over 20 starts a year while pitching in the tough AL East. During his time with Baltimore, he earned a 4.08 ERA. However, advanced metrics show that his numbers should be better. For example, he compiled a 3.74 FIP.
So, it’s understandable why the Seattle Mariners wanted to trade for him. At the time it looked like the Seattle Mariners were trading for a pitcher just entering his prime. Also, a move to a more pitcher-friendly park would help him get better results as well.
Seattle made this trade expecting to have a great one-two punch at the top of their rotation with him and Felix Hernandez, to go with a good offense. At the time, the 2008 M’s were thought to be playoff contenders. Unfortunately, they finished last in the AL West, a whopping 39 games behind Anaheim. Meanwhile, Bedard threw only 81 innings over 15 starts finishing with a 6-4 record and 3.67 ERA. Was this trade failure the final straw for Bavasi? Quite possibly.
Coming into the 2010 season, with a new GM Jack Zduriencik, the Seattle Mariners made a bit of a surprising move. They traded for, at the time, three-time All-Star and former Cy Young winner, Cliff Lee. The 2009 Seattle Mariners had an unexpected season winning 10 over their Pythagorean win total. This sounds eerily familiar to their 2021 season.
Many experts predicted regression for the Seattle Mariners for the upcoming 2010 season. So, acquiring Lee was a little curious, to say the least. Nevertheless, the idea of a one-two punch of Lee and Hernandez was too tantalizing to pass up. And the hope was this duo would fare better than the Bedard – Hernandez pairing did.
Unfortunately, the Seattle Mariners finished fourth in the AL West. Before the trade deadline, they dealt Lee to division rivals. the Texas Rangers. Texas not only broke an 11-year playoff drought, but they also won the division and went to the World Series.
A positive for the Seattle Mariners, King Felix won the AL Cy Young. The return the Seattle Mariners received from Texas was Justin Smoak, Blake Beavan, Matt Lawson, and Josh Lueke. Smoak was a highly touted first baseman and Texas’ top prospect. At the time he came to Seattle with a career .291 avg.
None of these players panned out the way the Seattle Mariners hoped. Fortunately, the players Seattle gave up for Lee, for Tyson Gillies (minors), Phillippe Aumont, and JC Ramirez didn’t do much either, but the potential for disaster was high.
Why this trip down memory lane? Well, we can draw some parallels from the Seattle Mariners’ Robbie Ray signing to other past acquisitions. For example, Ray looks to have figured it out and future success should be following him to Seattle. Just like everyone thought with Bedard.
Another example, is the Seattle Mariners are coming off a year where they greatly overachieved, based on their Pythagorean win total (14 wins over projected). The year before they traded for Lee then disintegrated.
None of this is to say that M’s fans should expect Ray to be the next Bedard and for the Seattle Mariners to finish last in the AL West. As they say in the investment world: Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital.
However, there needs to be realistic expectations for the upcoming year. Looking at advanced metrics, Ray got some good fortune to go his way with Toronto in 2021. His ERA was 2.84 while his FIP was 3.69. That’s almost a full run difference. FIP is the measure of a pitcher’s effectiveness at limiting home runs, walks, hit by pitches, and causing strikeouts.
Ray showed in the past that he possesses some great bat missing stuff. Three times in his career, the lefty fireballer struck out over 12 batters per 9 innings pitched. His problem always was the ability to control it. Until last year his low mark for walks per nine innings was 3.5 steadily progressing to its peak in 2020 at 7.8. Last season he posted a 2.4 ratio, by far the lowest of his career.
Looking more at these three pitchers, Ray is similar to Bedard in that both pitchers both only go about six innings per start. Lee was at just about eight innings. Of the three Ray comes in with the highest career strikeout per nine innings, 11.2, Bedard second at 8.6, and Lee last at 7.6. If you run those names backward you’d have the correct order for their walks per nine innings; Lee 1.9, Bedard 3.7, and Ray 3.9.
Bedard only made 46 starts during his tenure with the Seattle Mariners, never pitching over 130 innings in a season. His end-of-the-year stat lines were good but looking closer at certain categories and factoring in how uncomfortable he was plus criticism for exiting games after only throwing 90 pitches the numbers were deceiving. Injuries affected his availability to pitch which included missing all of 2010 due to shoulder surgery. Not what the team was expecting from someone thought to be an “ace”.
As previously mentioned, Lee was only with the Seattle Mariners for part of one season. A reason Philadelphia traded Lee in the first place was that he intended to test free agency when his contract ended. So, resigning Lee might have been problematic even if Seattle had a good team.
Neither Bedard or Lee worked out for the Seattle Mariners. There’s an old cliche, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Maybe the third time will be a charm. And maybe this time they finally got it right. Here’s to hoping that’s the case but fully understanding it may not be.
How do you feel about the Seattle Mariners Signing Robbie Ray? Do past high-profile disappointments play a factor in your expectations? Let us know in the comments section below.