Origins of Robbie Ray, Giants All-Star? Learning new things, intensity and a Chuck E. Cheese throwdown

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

It's absolutely the right choice to have Robbie Ray start for the San Francisco Giants on Sunday with the first-place Dodgers in town. It's also too bad fans won't see him pitch in Atlanta on Tuesday evening.
Ray is twice an All-Star now but has yet to appear in the event. It's baseball's loss — his flair is tailor-made for the big stage. While the 33-year-old appears mild-mannered with his easy grin and his messy mop of hair, or perhaps just lefty-eccentric with those much discussed tight pants and grunt-tastic efforts on the mound, pitching coach J.P. Martinez suggests Ray has an alter ego.
'I always say he looks like Razor Ramon, the old professional wrestler.' Martinez said. 'I'm trying to get Robbie in costume at some point, I'm going to peer-pressure him into it. And the more I think about it, the more I like play off that analogy, it's such a good metaphor for Robbie because he's actually really goofy, but he pretends like he can play the really serious, aggressive role.'
The Razor Ramon — Razor Ray? — comp does fit well with the tight pants. And then there is the Chuck E. Cheese brawl. (In the spirit of pro wrestling, we exaggerate for comic effect.)
'We were in Hickory (N.C.) on my son's 11th birthday, so we had a bunch of kids and all the team over to Chuck E. Cheese,' said Chris Michalak, Ray's Class-A pitching coach. 'All the guys were having a blast, and the next thing I know, there's Robbie and another player starting to get into it, like face to face at Chuck E. Cheese. At my son's birthday party, I've got to break up a fight at Chuck E. Cheese. If I hadn't, fists would have been flying.
'But: Are you kidding me? We're at my son's birthday party — you guys can't just have pizza and go play some video games? You've got to go toe-to-toe …. at Chuck E. Cheese?! To this day, I bring it up every time I see him.'
Ray verifies Michalak's account. 'I was 19!' he said, sounding simultaneously chagrined and amused. 'I don't even remember what it was about, but yes, it was at a child's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.'
Another wild Robbie Ray fact: He played on a travel ball team in Tennessee that featured two other future big-leaguers, and Ray was the star of the show, making for a nice little subplot for Sunday's start against Los Angeles.
'I hit leadoff,' former Astros and A's utility player Tony Kemp said. 'Mookie Betts hit second. And Robbie Ray hit third. Robbie was the best hitter on that team.'
This is not something Ray keeps to himself, understandably. 'Oh yeah, I tell everyone that all the time I was a way better hitter than Mookie,' he said. ' All the time.'
Betts is 1-for-2 with a walk and a strikeout against Ray in the big leagues going into Sunday's series finale.
Kemp recalls being wowed by Ray even before he joined that star-studded club. Ray had previously played for a makeshift local team and, Kemp said, 'When we were freshmen, we faced Robbie in a doubleheader and he pitched a complete game against us and hit a three-run home run. He was pretty much the sole contributor in the game.'
Ray caught the second game of the doubleheader, and afterward, Kemp's coach, Steve Ashcraft, approached Ray 'and was like, 'Hey, do you want to come play for a real baseball team? '' Ray recalled. 'I said sure, and he said, 'OK, we have another game here tonight. Come down, we'll have a jersey for you.''
Back then, Ray said, he was a better first baseman and offensive player than a pitcher, but left-handers always wind up getting mound time. As a freshman, he threw 76 mph, but he took some lessons from former Giants left-hander Gino Minutelli and by the time he left Brentwood (Tenn.) High, he was throwing up to 93 mph and had offers from Vanderbilt and Arkansas.
'I didn't have a super max-effort delivery, like I do now, I was kind of all arm,' Ray said. 'It was sort of just sling it in there.'
Minutelli helped him with grips and command, and Ray had a big 12-6 curveball and a changeup to go along with the fastball.
'We had some good battles,' said Kemp, who went to local rival Centennial High. 'He was a goofy kid who didn't take himself too seriously, but his mentality was different. He wanted to have fun but he also worked really hard. He had that on-off switch. That's what made him so good.'
A year after the Nationals drafted Ray in the 12 th round in 2011, he added a slider, which he honed over the next three years, ultimately ditching the curveball and replacing it with a knuckle curve in 2017.
'Robbie's always working,' said Michalak, recalling how amped Ray was about working on a new hand position for a pitch before his final start of the year in the Carolina League. 'It was a meaningless bullpen session and everyone else was thinking about going home, and here's Robbie still trying to find something to get better. His determination is his best asset.'
The piece de resistance in Ray's quest to become a frontline starter stemmed from a disastrous warmup session before a 2017 start in Miami pitching for the Diamondbacks. Ray lost the zone entirely, and pitching coach Mike Butcher had to think on the fly.
'They were getting relievers warmed up quick, it was so bad,' Ray said. 'My last pitch went over the backstop and into the stands. Mike walked in from the bullpen with me and said, 'I want you to try something: Throw max effort, every pitch, for as long as you can. Just give us everything you can.''
That game is best known for giving rise to the Robbie Ray Grunt. ('It just came out!' he said. 'I don't know why.') But the more important development was that going full-bore suited Ray perfectly.
'He was all over the place, and I was like, 'Robbie, just throw the freaking s--- out of it, man, just turn it loose' ' Butcher said. 'And he gets back on the mound, and he is grunting like Steffi Graf or Monica Seles in the U.S. Open. I was like, 'This is pretty loud, but he's blowing guys away.' Every single pitch was big, like 97-98 with a power slider. He'd just figured it out.'
That same year, Ray was hit on the side of the head by a 108 mph liner off Luke Voit's bat, a scary moment that left him in a heap and bleeding; he got off the field under his own power but was wobbly and was diagnosed with a concussion.
'My ears were ringing, it took a minute for me to be able to hear everybody, but I knew I was OK,' he said.
Even so, the first time back out after taking a drive off the head can be hairy, and the Diamondbacks sent Ray to their minor-league complex to get past any nerves.
'They set the machine to just fire balls at me on the mound,' said Ray, who now wears a protective insert inside his cap. 'Of course my first game back, I took a line drive off the shin very first thing.'
The changeup was a work in progress for a long time until his well-publicized call to fellow All-Star Tarik Skubal last winter to get tips; adding that pitch sent this season into overdrive. Ray has gone from throwing changeups less than 4% of the time to 13%, and opponents are hitting just .220 against it — and it makes his fastball (.200 average against) and slider (.170) all the better.
'The changeup is just another level to his game,' Martinez said. 'We have a running joke — if he throws a changeup and a guy swings, we look at each other and we go (mimics talking behind his hand) 'Not a heater! ,' because guys are always going to be on his fastball as much as they can because it's such a good fastball.'
Ray won the AL Cy Young award with Toronto in 2021 using his fastball 62% of the time, and now, after adding the changeup, he's down to about 53% fastballs and is again putting up All-Star numbers just two years removed from Tommy John surgery that included a flexor-tendon repair. It usually takes pitchers about two years to return to close to full effectiveness, but in Ray's case, he's even better — his ERA to is 2.63 compared to 2.84.
When Ray felt the flexor tendon blow in the second inning of a game with Seattle on March 31, 2023, he showed some max-effort grit. Though the elbow was toast, he worked two more innings.
'I knew it popped, it felt like somebody took a knife and was grinding my elbow, but I thought, 'If I come out now, I'm going to bury our bullpen. I've got to get as deep as I can into this game,' ' he said. 'I couldn't make it worse, the damage was done. So I started throwing pancakes.'
He walked five and gave up three earned runs but accomplished his goal, Seattle only needed to use three relievers. In early May, he underwent surgery and that offseason, the Mariners dealt him to the Giants for Anthony DeSclafani, Mitch Haniger and cash; the Giants, who had talked to Ray when he was a free agent, were willing to wait for Ray to recover fully, and now the team has him through 2026.
'It's super-cool that Robbie is constantly adapting,' said Curt Casali, who caught Ray in Seattle and San Francisco. 'He's always been just a pro's pro, but he's got some snark to him — he's not afraid to talk s--- and I love that. Robbie always stays true to himself.
'You have to be very confident and in touch with your own game to be able to be that good for multiple teams and he's in that upper echelon.'
Butcher recalls once asking Ray if he wanted to be good, or if he wanted to be great.
'I said, 'There are a lot of good players in this league, but do you want to be a dude? Do you want to be an All-Star, a Hall of Famer? '' Butcher said. 'He checked all the boxes. He wants to be great. He wants to be the best left-handed pitcher in the game, he wants strikeout titles.
'He knows what he wants to be and how he's going to get there. He could win a Cy Young every year, he's that good.'