The Jays’ Robbie Ray was cruising until an old nemesis — the long ball — made for a long inning

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This article was published 30/09/2021 (1494 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there was one area of weakness in Robbie Ray’s game this year, it could be found in his tendency to give up home runs.

Ray had one of the best seasons by a Blue Jays pitcher in franchise history. He struck out more batters than anyone else in baseball and in November the native of Tennessee likely will take home the first Cy Young Award of his career.

The only kryptonite in an otherwise perfect campaign could be found in all those long fly balls that left the park. Homers proved to be his Achilles heel again on Thursday night as what appeared to be another spectacular outing turned sour in astonishingly quick fashion en route to a 6-2 loss against the rival New York Yankees.

Ray carried a one-run lead into the top of the sixth inning, having retired 12 batters in a row. It was another dominating performance from the guy who has been the American League’s top pitcher, until it wasn’t. Disaster shortly followed as Anthony Rizzo homered to tie the game 2-2. Seconds later, Aaron Judge went back-to-back with his second shot of the game.

After a walk to Giancarlo Stanton, the knockout blow came courtesy of a two-run homer by Gleyber Torres. The exuberant crowd at Rogers Centre that had been brought to its feet just one inning prior on a go-ahead RBI double by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was shell-shocked. A lot of people say baseball is too slow, well Thursday’s events came in such rapid succession they were almost impossible to process.

“I think it was a product of the whole game,” Ray said after the loss. “I think their game plan against me was to lay off the slider and get a fastball out over (the plate). The situations, the home runs, I think they were all on fastballs. I just have to do a better job of landing my slider early, because I feel like when I can get my slider early in counts and in the game, I start to get those chases later in the game.”

Ray didn’t have his swing-and-miss stuff with the Yankees laying off his slider, but apart from the lack of strikeouts it was hard to tell for most of the night. Aside from the lone mistake to Judge on a first-inning homer, Ray had the Yankees hitters looking completely overmatched until midway through that dreaded sixth when the newly renovated Rogers Centre roof started crashing down.

After a leadoff walk to Gary Sanchez in the top of the second, Ray didn’t allow another baserunner to reach base until Rizzo took the scenic route on his 21st homer of the season in the sixth. Four batters later, Ray was out of the game entirely, having allowed five runs on four hits and three walks across 5 1/3 innings.

That snapped a string of 12 consecutive starts of Ray surrendering three earned runs or fewer. It also increased his season home run total to 33, which is the fourth most in the AL behind Texas’s Jordan Lyles and Mike Foltynewicz and Detroit’s Tarik Skubal. Ray’s name can be found on the leaderboard of just about every major stat, homers just happen to be the one the Jays wish he had been left off.

There’s an outside chance Ray could pitch an inning out of the bullpen Sunday, but this likely represents a bitter end to what has been one of the biggest success stories in the majors this season: the guy who was acquired for peanuts at last year’s deadline, then re-signed to a cheap one-year contract at the start of the off-season, coming through with the best season of his life and finally living up to the reputation that made him one of the game’s top prospects more than seven years ago.

Personal accolades take a back seat to team success at this time of the year, so it will be of little consolation to Ray, but the outing for New York should do little to hurt his chances at the Cy Young Award. The 29-year-old entered the series finale as the clear-cut favourite over New York’s Gerrit Cole and, despite the rough finish, Thursday’s outing doesn’t change that.

Ray ranks first in the AL in ERA (2.84), strikeouts (248), innings (193 1/3) and walks/hits per inning pitched (1.04). No pitcher in the majors has completed more games with double-digit strikeouts than Ray’s 10 and his 23 quality starts also rank first.

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Some of the advanced stats tell a similar story. Ray ranks first among all AL pitchers in Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement level at 6.9. He also has the lead in win probability added at 3.6, which attempts to measure how win expectancy changes between the start and end of each play.

The only major stat where Ray trails Cole is in Fangraphs’ WAR, which places a lot of importance on home runs. That seemed like a minor detail entering Thursday’s series finale, and it should still be when voters from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America submit their votes at the end of the week, but the issue was in plain view for everyone to see against the Yankees and it stung.

“We’re going to do the best we can in these three games,” Ray said in advance of the Jays’ final series of the year against Baltimore. “We’re going to prepare just like we do for any game. We’re going to come out and do the best we can. You can’t ask much more from anybody in the clubhouse. They’ve been laying it on the line all year and I’m very proud of how they’ve been handling it.”

The ball was flying out of Rogers Centre on Thursday night, and with the Jays trailing the Red Sox and Mariners by one game for the second wild-card spot, they can only hope their shot at the post-season didn’t leave the park right along with it.

Gregor Chisholm is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @GregorChisholm or reach him via email: gchisholm@thestar.ca