{"id":40274,"date":"2020-11-07T15:36:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-07T20:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=40274"},"modified":"2020-11-07T15:36:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-07T20:36:22","slug":"toronto-blue-jays-re-sign-robbie-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/11\/07\/toronto-blue-jays-re-sign-robbie-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Blue Jays Re-Sign Robbie Ray"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/toronto-blue-jays\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> have made the first signing of the 2020 offseason. They are bringing <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rayro02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robbie Ray<\/a><\/strong> back on a one-year deal. The contract will pay Ray $8 million dollars. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the news early Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">First free agent deal of the offseason is done. Left-hander Robbie Ray and the Toronto Blue Jays are in agreement on a one-year, $8 million deal, a source familiar with the contract tells ESPN. Good start to the hot stove for Toronto, which will use Ray as a starter, and for Ray.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1325163362863390720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays Re-Sign Robbie Ray<\/h2>\n<p>Ray began the year with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/arizona-diamondbacks\/\" target=\"_self\">Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a>. The former 12th-round selection from 2010 threw 31 innings with a 7.84 ERA and 43 strikeouts before the Diamondbacks flipped him to the Blue Jays. Ray threw 20 and two-thirds more innings after the trade with an improved 4.79 ERA and 25 strikeouts. It&#8217;s hard to know exactly how much Toronto did with the veteran starter in such a short amount of time, but several of Ray&#8217;s advanced numbers, especially his walks per nine innings, got measurably better. The main number that didn&#8217;t improve was strikeouts per nine innings. That fell from 12.5 to 10.9, but that could simply just be due to the smaller sample size. It&#8217;s still very close to Ray&#8217;s career figure of 11.1 per nine innings.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/washington-nationals\/\" target=\"_self\">Washington Nationals<\/a> originally selected Ray in the 2010 Amateur Draft out of high school but traded him along with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/krolia01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ian Krol<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=lombast02,lombast01&amp;search=Steve+Lombardozzi&amp;utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steve Lombardozzi<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/detroit-tigers\/\" target=\"_self\">Detroit Tigers<\/a> in exchange for <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/fistedo01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Doug Fister<\/a><\/strong> in 2013. The Tigers then traded Ray to the Diamondbacks in a big three-team trade in 2014 that also sent <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gregodi01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Didi Gregorius<\/a><\/strong> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/new-york-yankees\/\" target=\"_self\">New York Yankees<\/a>. Ray has thrown a total of 842 and a third innings with a 4.26 ERA, 4.12 FIP, and 8.6 career WAR.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means for the Future<\/h3>\n<p>Ray may not ever recapture his peak production with Arizona that earned a handful of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/y\/youngcy01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Cy Young<\/strong><\/a> votes in 2017, but Ray is a decent investment for 2021. He has plenty of years left in his arm at just 29-years-old. Toronto doesn&#8217;t have the deepest rotation yet, so Ray is more than acceptable as a starter for one season. He probably enters 2021 as the second or third starter behind <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/ryuhy01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hyun Jin Ryu<\/a><\/strong> and maybe <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/pearsna01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nate Pearson<\/a><\/strong>. A one-year deal gives the Blue Jays flexibility with Ray and how he fits into their ultimate plans for contention.<\/p>\n<p>Main Image<br \/>\n<a id=\"NPSeVEWTSOFZhVr3kxbSLQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1272139020\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'NPSeVEWTSOFZhVr3kxbSLQ',sig:'BqaXf5UBH6JPWXqiR0VKUaymzxTqECqO1FM2IPZH7XA=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1272139020',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Toronto Blue Jays have made the first signing of the 2020 offseason. They are bringing Robbie Ray back on a one-year deal. The contract will pay Ray $8 million dollars. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the news early Saturday afternoon. First free agent deal of the offseason is done. Left-hander Robbie Ray and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":40281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,35,7],"tags":[2637,36],"class_list":["post-40274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-news","category-bluejays","tag-robbie-ray","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"modified_by":"Jared Cantatore","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}