A year ago, almost to the day, Robbie Ray was lost.
It was May 5, 2016. Fresh off getting hammered by the Pirates and Rockies in back-to-back home starts, the Arizona Diamondbacks' lefty was warming up in the visiting bullpen at Marlins Park. Or at least he was trying to.
"He was all over the place," Arizona pitching coach Mike Butcher said. "Just trying too hard mechanically to get the ball to go where he wanted."
Adds Ray: "It was probably the worst bullpen I've ever had."
So, after the national anthem, as Butcher and Ray walked side by side down the left-field line toward the third-base dugout, the coach went Zen on his pupil.
"Just go out there, cut it loose," Butcher said. "Stop thinking so much and just trust your stuff. Step on it a little bit."
Even though Ray went right out and retired the Marlins 1-2-3 in the bottom of the first on just 12 pitches, that's not what everyone noticed. Instead, what stood out were the resounding and repeated grunting sounds -- 12 of them, to be exact -- that were coming from the rubber.
"It was so loud that it sounded like there was a microphone on the mound," says D-backs pitcher Archie Bradley, who was in the minors at the time but was watching the game on his phone. "I had never heard him do that before."
The grunting coincided with a conspicuous uptick in velocity. That game against the Marlins, Ray's four-seam fastball averaged 94.3 mph, up from the 93 mph he'd averaged in his first handful of starts. Instead of maxing out in the mid-90s, his heater was approaching 98 mph.
"As soon as the game started," says Butcher, "there was another level of intensity. You could just see it."
You could hear it, too.
'An extreme grunter'
There are grunters, and then there are grunters.
An (extremely) informal poll of the Arizona clubhouse reveals that roughly 20 percent of major league pitchers get their grunt on. Justin Verlander has been known to grunt. So too have Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw. On the Diamondbacks staff, ace Zack Greinke indulges, as does fellow righty Braden Shipley. While some are louder than others, compared to Ray, they might as well be whispering.
"Robbie's an extreme grunter," says veteran catcher Jeff Mathis, who spent 12 seasons with the Angels, Blue Jays and Marlins before joining the D-backs this year. When he reported to training camp and strapped on the gear to catch Ray for the very first time during a bullpen session, he couldn't believe his ears. "I thought it was going to be nice and easy, but that wasn't the case," Mathis says. "It was just straight gruntin' out of the gate."
So what exactly does Ray's roar sound like?
"If you just turned the TV on and you didn't hear the commentating, you'd think you were watching a tennis match." Arizona bullpen catcher Mark Reed
"It's like something you'd hear in the weight room," says Nationals shortstop Trea Turner, who went hitless in three at-bats against Ray last week, including two strikeouts. "It sounds like a powerlifter trying to throw up a whole bunch of weight."
Ray, for his part, was more or less oblivious to what was coming out of his mouth.
"I knew it. I was doing it, but I didn't realize the magnitude of how loud I was doing it," says Ray, who was a 12th-round pick of the Nats in 2010. "It doesn't feel like yelling or grunting. It just feels like I'm pushing everything out."
What it feels like and what it sounds like are two totally different things.
"If you just turned the TV on and you didn't hear the commentating," says Arizona bullpen catcher Mark Reed, "you'd think you were watching a tennis match."
If you're wondering how a bullpen catcher -- a guy whose job requires him to spend the entire game cooped up in a remote area that's an entire football field away from the pitcher's mound -- knows what the grunt sounds like, it's because the noise knows no boundaries. Ray grunts in bullpen sessions with Reed. He grunts during warm-up pitches in the game. He grunts during spring training and all through the regular season. He grunts not only on fastballs, but also on off-speed stuff.
"If he's throwing a pitch," Reed says, "he's grunting."
And odds are, if Robbie Ray is grunting, opposing batters are whiffing.
'Giving everything I got on every single pitch'
In his first two seasons in the majors, Ray averaged 92.9 mph with his fastball and tallied 7.7 strikeouts per nine innings, a rather ho-hum number by today's standards. Last year, with the introduction of the grunt, his average heater velocity jumped to 94.1 mph, second hardest among lefty starters behind Seattle's James Paxton. In related news, Ray's K rate spiked to 11.3 per nine innings, the second-best mark among National League starters. Unfortunately, his cherished cheese got him into trouble, too.
In 2016, Ray threw his fastball 72 percent of the time, more than any starting pitcher not named Bartolo, and about 20 percent more than the league average. Not surprisingly, despite the increased velocity, he had trouble putting hitters away. "Last year, you'd see lots of 3-2 counts, lots of foul-offs," Reed says. "Then five innings comes around, he's at his pitch limit."
"I knew it, I was doing it, but I didn't realize the magnitude of how loud I was doing it. It doesn't feel like yelling or grunting. It just feels like I'm pushing everything out."Robbie Ray
Despite making all 32 starts last year, Ray worked just 174 innings, an average of 5.1, which was third lowest in the National League. He threw 18.2 pitches per inning, most in the majors. This year has been a different story.
Thanks to improved command of his off-speed stuff, Ray has been able to lay off the gas. Through his first six starts, he was deploying his curveball and slider a combined 40 percent of the time, about double the frequency of a year ago. Not only is he using the off-speed stuff more, he's using it better: Opposing batters are hitting just .089 against his breaking balls, down from .211 last season. He's still striking out a ton of batters -- 49 in 36⅓ innings this season. "He's got front-of-the-rotation stuff," says Butcher of his 25-year-old hurler. "It's just a matter of him putting it together, and I think he's starting to do that now."
How did #Dbacks lefty Robbie Ray average 11.3 K's per nine (2nd among SP's)? Apparently, grunting had something to do with it. #GruntWork pic.twitter.com/egGbRWNoYH
— Eddie Matz (@ESPNeddiematz) March 9, 2017
The question is, while he's busy putting everything together, can his body avoid falling apart? How exactly does the left arm of a 6-foot-2, 195-pound pitcher withstand all the extra effort Ray's grunt-a-thon suggests? After all, it's one thing when a failed starter moves to the bullpen and his velocity spikes because he's throwing one inning instead of six and doesn't need to leave anything in the tank. It's quite another when a pitcher suddenly adds a couple of miles per hour on a pitch he's throwing 60 times a game.
"It's a little more physically exhausting," says Ray in the D-backs clubhouse a day after fanning 10 Nationals batters in six innings. "Just the toll on your body, that extra three to four miles an hour. I woke up today pretty sore, and I never really got sore in the past. It's definitely different, giving everything I got on every single pitch. It's not only physically exhausting, but mentally too."
For what it's worth, the coach who turned up Ray's volume in the first place isn't the least bit concerned.
"He's doing what he's supposed to be doing," Butcher says. "He's not doing anything unnatural. You train your body to do the things it's supposed to do. This didn't happen overnight. He's always had a good arm. He takes care of himself. He eats right. He's trained himself to throw that way."
In other words, Robbie Ray has done plenty of grunt work.