Robbie Ray knows performance is paramount in 60-game contract season

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Robbie Ray burst out the gate with more than 70 pitches in his live batting practice on Sunday.

He’s a man on a mission. There was no real consideration to sit out this shortened season while the coronavirus pandemic continues.

“Kind of a tough situation, honestly, because I’m a free agent next year,” Ray said. “I need to pitch this year.”

If Ray can put together a season similar to his 2017 campaign, when he was an All-Star with a 2.89 ERA and 218 strikeouts, a suitor could back up the Brink’s truck for the southpaw.

Ray stayed in Arizona during the quarantine, working out regularly to not lose the momentum he had built up in spring. He played catch every day until players were allowed to throw off the mound at Salt River Fields twice a week. With diet changes, his body was in better shape than it had been in years past.

He said this was his fourth live BP in the last three weeks.

“When we found out that everything shut down, I kind of had the assumption that once everything got fired back up, that it was going to be a quick go where you show up in three, four days, and then camp is 30 days or less,” he said. “Being the year that it is, I didn’t want to be behind the ball and not able to go out and perform at my best Day 1.”

Ray isn’t in season form yet, but he estimated he’s 85% of the way there. That’s much closer to Opening Day form than players are at the beginning of spring training, when it takes more time to get back their arm strength and stamina.

“When I saw him a couple days before this camp 2.0 started, he said that he was ready to start a baseball season and he backed that up today,” said Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo. “His stuff was extremely aggressive. He was throwing balls to both sides of the plate. Great depth on certain breaking balls. It wasn’t perfect, nor do we expect it to be, but for Day 1, it was outstanding.”

Ray needs to maximize his innings this year. A shortened season will make it tougher for teams to evaluate players and for the athletes to prove their worth.

With only 60 games, a particularly streaky stretch could have a massive influence on the end-of-year statistics.

Lovullo said he thinks that could present a challenge, but scouts are used to relying on more than just numbers.

“They evaluate what it looks like, and the life in body, life in the stuff, life in the bat,” he said. “Even though it’s a short and condensed type of a situation, I think they’re going to get plenty of looks at the right guys at the right time.”

Ray said a player can’t get wrapped up in a couple bad starts. If a pitcher has two bad games out of 12 outings, that number looks far worse than in a typical 33-start season.

But the other way around applies, too.

“You can look at it either way,” he said. “If you can go out and you dominate for 10 to 12 starts, they can look at that and say, ‘Well it’s only 10-12 starts’ — but it’s like, ‘Yes, but I still dominated.”

Resolutely preparing for the season and free agency around the corner, Ray is hoping for that dominant dozen patch of performances.

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