Blue Jays takeaways: Robbie Ray is still in the zone, but the Rays find a way

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This article was published 22/05/2021 (1637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on Saturday’s 3-1 Blue Jays loss to Tampa Bay in Dunedin, Fla.:

A wild pitch turned out to be the difference in Tampa Bay scoring the game-winning run in the eighth inning Saturday night.

With runners on first and second and one out, Anthony Castro – just activated off the injured list — bounced an 0-and-2 slider to Manuel Margot. It got away from Danny Jansen just enough to allow a heads-up Randy Arozarena to hustle from second to third, though the trailing runner didn’t move up.

With the go-ahead run just 90 feet away, the Jays had to bring the infield in, and Margot hit a ground ball past a diving Santiago Espinal at third for an RBI single.

In a normal defensive alignment, Margot’s grounder doesn’t get through and maybe even turns into an inning-ending double play, but because Arozarena was given a free base, everything changed.

An inning later, the Rays scored a big insurance run thanks to another wild pitch. Taylor Walls, making his major-league debut, was on second thanks to his second double of the night. Trent Thornton’s first pitch to the next hitter, Joey Wendle, was in the dirt. Again the ball didn’t get away from Jansen all that much, but Walls took off for third and Jansen made a hurried throw that wound up in left field, allowing Walls to trot home.

• Saving the pen: Blue Jays relievers threw eight innings in Friday night’s loss to the Rays, and even with the overworked bullpen adding a couple of reinforcements Saturday, they needed Robbie Ray to get deep into the game.

The hard-throwing lefty has been one of only two reliable starters for the Jays this season, along with Hyun-Jin Ryu. Ray played the part once again, but he did it with a twist: pitching to contact early.

The grunty southpaw with the tight pants and 98-mile-per-hour fastball has spent most of his career either striking hitters out or walking them, but he did neither over the first three innings, in which he allowed just one hit.

By getting the Rays to put the ball in play early, Ray kept his pitch count down. He threw just 39 pitches to get those first nine outs, and it would have been only 34 if not for a Marcus Semien error with two out in the third.

That low pitch count left Ray with plenty in the tank into the middle innings and he started to rack up the strikeouts, winding up with seven over his season-best seven-inning outing, leaving in a 1-1 tie. Astonishingly, he once again didn’t walk anybody.

Ray led the major leagues in walks last season and averaged a free pass every other inning over five seasons coming into this year. He’s now walked only one in his last six starts combined, covering 37 1/3 innings, while striking out 49.

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• Blast from the past: In baseball’s BeforeTimes, prior to the analytical revolution, we used to see pitchouts base attempt, a catcher would call for a pitch well up and away in order to get a better shot at throwing the runner out.

But the running game has lost its lustre. With so many home runs being hit, the risk of making an out on the bases is much higher than the 90-foot reward. It doesn’t change the run expectancy enough to steal bases all that often, and league leaders now have closer to 40 steals in a season than 100.

Given that, it was almost shocking to see the Jays call for a pitchout in the top of the eighth, on the first pitch to Yandy Diaz with Arozarena at first.

They were right, Arozarena was on the move with the pitch, but Diaz reached out and poked the ball foul, protecting his runner. Castro didn’t get the ball up or away enough, and you almost can’t blame him since it may well have been the first pitchout he had ever been asked to throw.

The miss kept Arozarena alive on the bases to eventually score the winning run.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness