Currently viewing the tag: "Robbie Ray"

Is This What Success Feels Like?

On September 27, 2017 By

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’ve fully come to terms with the success the Diamondbacks have experienced this season. The team was projected to win 77 games entering the season, and after what we witnessed last year, you can understand why. There were very few changes to the squad in the offseason. It was mostly the same …

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There’s never been a more exciting time to be a Diamondbacks fan in recent memory. The win streak stands at 13. The team never trailed for nearly 100 straight innings, and once they fell behind, they quickly tied the game, then beat the Dodgers for the 10th time this season. They’ve cut the gap between them and Los Angeles in …

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Robbie Ray. There’s so much we’ve said about the guy. He’s been tantalizing. He’s been frustrating. He’s been monstrous. He’s been dismal. For everything you had nice to say about him entering the season, there was a big caveat attached. “He’s got big velocity, but struggles to put guys away.” “That breaking ball looked good, but did you see …

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Earlier this week, we took a broad look at some Diamondbacks pitchers who showcase strong pitch tandems and troublesome pitch tandems. The basis of this work is the new data available from Baseball Prospectus which tracks a number of items, including release points, how similar (or dissimilar) two distinct pitches look upon release, and how similar (or dissimilar) two distinct …

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There are those times, in my journey to learn about baseball, that I’ve legitimately had my mind blown. Most of them occurred early on, when I learned that saves were made up by some guy in the late 60’s, RBI’s were mostly a function of guys getting on base in front of a hitter, and pitchers don’t have all that …

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Pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in about a week. That’s cool, and plenty of Diamondbacks are already in Scottsdale given the team’s headquarters fall inside the Cactus League boundaries. You don’t need a refresher on how the starting staff fared last year. It was a disaster, and even Robbie Ray‘s bright spot (strikeouts) had it’s own detractors …

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How do you know if something is broken? Usually, you give something a go and don’t get the desired effect. Maybe you try again and still get an error. Other times, after a second try, everything works just fine. There always little blips on the radar of life. I mean, we all have to cycle our routers once in a …

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There’s an axiom on the internet that simply states, “don’t read the comments.” I get that. Comment sections are littered with thoughtless, rude comments. Well, I should say most comment section, because here, things have been very good. I can’t even count the number of posts that have been born in the comments here. Readers have been a great inspiration …

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The playoffs started yesterday, and that’s both good and bad. Playoff baseball is fun (good), but with every passing final box score, we’re reminded that the long, cold, dead, baseball-less winter is fast approaching (bad). The Jays beat the Orioles in a game that’ll remain notorious for Buck Showalter neglecting to use Zach Britton, the best reliever in baseball, …

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Summertime in Phoenix is not what you want. The heat is grating and aside from Pokémon Go, there is no reason to go outside. Pool water turns to bath water and by August, we’re all essentially quarantined within our concrete and air conditioned structures. It can be relatively easy for one to forget that temperatures are actually allowed to be …

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One of my favorite debates within the baseball analytics community is how to evaluate pitching. We’ve collectively moved on from ERA since it has some obvious problems. The first is the most glaring: ERA tells most of the story of what happened, not how talented a pitcher is. We don’t really care what happened, we care mostly about how good …

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There are very few circumstances in which it makes sense to stand pat during any trade season, be it in the offseason or in July. This July, however, the D-backs are about as far on that end of the spectrum as a team can be. Currently sitting in 4th place in the NL West and in need of an historic

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Robbie Ray started the season with three very good starts, rolling through good Cubs, Dodgers and Giants offenses to allow just 4 earned runs in 18.1 innings, good for a shiny 1.96 ERA to start the year with a strong 8.34 K/9. From late April to early June, things weren’t quite so rosy, as Ray averaged under 5 innings for …

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Patrick Corbin and Robbie Ray have more in common than pitching left-handed. This season, both have doggedly stuck with a changeup, despite poor results in the past. And while Corbin’s slider had been one of the best in the game and Ray’s had been one of the worst, they’re both using a fourseam fastball, sinker, breaking ball, and changeup, in …

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Has Robbie Ray been unlucky this season? He sports a weirdly high .343 BABIP this season, and a staggering 27.0% line drive percentage — both numbers that few pitchers maintain over the course of a season. Last year, the highest BABIP for a qualified starter was Gio Gonzalez‘s .341 — and even after getting shelled last night, Gonzalez has …

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One of the first evolutions in sabermetrics was the idea that pitchers didn’t control nearly as much as was widely believed for a very long time. Some things pitchers clearly do influence heavily: strikeouts, and walks. And with those “defense-independent pitching” principles, we got the first generation of “ERA estimators,” statistics that derive most of their meaning from the outcomes …

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