Categories
Sinkerman
Robbie Ray has been pitching in the Major Leagues since 2014. He’s appeared in 282 games, started 277 of those, and across all that time spent on the mound, his approach has always been straightforward. Throw the ball straight. Throw the ball hard.
We’re talking about the 4-seamer. The ol’ tried-and-true hardball.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOver his career Ray has rode the Pony Express to a pretty successful 10+ year Major League career. With some seasonal variety, his usage of the 4-seam fastball has hovered around 50%. When he earned his first All-Star nod in 2017, Ray threw the 4-seam 56% of the time. In 2025, his second All-Star honors and nearly a decade later, Ray threw it 52% of the time. When he won the AL Cy Young Award, the 4-seam usage peaked at 59% on the year. The lowest his 4-seam percentage has ever been across a whole season was 39% in 2022…until now.
Ray’s 4-seam usage has officially dropped below 2022’s low to 38.7%. Tenths of a percentage point but still significant as it might be a signpost of what lies ahead. Sunday’s masterpiece against the Braves has a lot to do with this. Over 8 innings in a game in which he threw 95 pitches, Ray reached back and hurled his signature fastball just six times. 6.3% of his mix which is his lowest single-game usage of the 4-seam fastball over his entire 13 year career. And it worked! He got outs, just not in the way Ray, as a three-outcome pitcher, is typically used to getting outs. 24 outs were recorded by Ray, and just two of those 24 went down by way of the K. He didn’t throw a 4-seam fastball until the 6th inning — an inning he rarely sees considering the rear-back-and-huck, command-be-damned style he’s developed over the years.
Let’s look at those years. Ray has completed 6 innings in 49% of his starts. He’s completed 8 innings in 5 (three of them with the Giants), and has now pitched at least 6 innings with 2 or fewer strikeouts just three times in his career. Everything about Sunday’s outing was an anomaly for Ray. He stuffed his 4-seamer in his back pocket and essentially forgot it there. In its stead, he relied on a trio of sinker (39%) – slider (23%) – change-up (26%). A Logan Webb type spread that got Logan Webb results: 4 hits, a walk and an unearned run over 8 innings and 95 pitches, with more groundouts than flyouts (10 – 9).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe reasoning behind the sinker shift is pretty straightforward. Ray had a rough May. He posted a 6.44 ERA over six starts and just 29.1 innings pitched with a string of four games in which he didn’t get through the 5th inning.
This rough patch coincided with a pretty rough patch for a headless rotation with Webb on the injured list. Ray didn’t fill the lead role when the team needed him to; rather, he kinda devolved like the rest of them. Starters couldn’t find their way deep into games which taxed an already ragtag and unreliable bullpen. It wasn’t pretty. Things needed to change.
The sure-fire way to pitch deep into a ballgame is to get quick outs. The quickest way to get quick outs is to induce contact. A strikeout requires a minimum of three pitches. An out by way of a ball in play, just one. As Logan Webb acolytes, this logic and philosophy is felt on a spiritual level. Ray is not Webb, and that has frustrated me, as I’m sure it has many of you. Ray’s whole approach to pitching is verticality. The 4-seamer is designed to ride up. He doesn’t rely on velocity (his average velo is about league average), it’s about perceived vertical movement. It’s supposed to invite swings and miss swings — but this can be a laborious way to retire a hitter. Borderline pitches at the top of the zone can be taken for balls, they can be fouled away. In this fastball acclimated league, ticking a piece off a straight pitch isn’t hard to do, and often, we’d see hitters drag Ray into these prolonged frustrating battles of 3-ball counts and countless foul tips and spoiled pitches. The longer an at-bat takes, the more it favors the hitter, and whole outings would be undermined by a couple of batters that matched Ray’s stubbornness.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe sinker has a different look than the 4-seam. We know this. It’s heavier with more movement, an arm-side lilt with less rise than the 4-seamer. If a hitter takes a hack that would foul off a 4-seamer, or lift it dangerously into the air, that same swing would probably put a sinker in play but drive it into the ground. The sinker has just a 5% K-percentage, and its hard-hit percentage is much higher than Ray’s 4-seam (61% to 42%), but opponent’s average launch angle has been cut in half (24 degrees to 12). As scary as it is for someone like Ray who prefers whiffs and strikeouts, embracing contact can be positive. The sinker doesn’t have to be as fine, it doesn’t need to be painted as much as 4-seamer to be effective. It’s another way to get outs, to get them fast and keep Ray in the game — this was the thinking behind the sinker’s return.
Ray’s sinker didn’t just come out of nowhere. It lingered around the periphery of Ray’s repertoire for his entire career. He used it as much as a quarter of the time in 2015 and 2016 before it dropped out of favor and went almost the way of the dodo in 2021. It had a resurgence in 2022, throwing it 20% of the time during his first year in Seattle, but as Ray struggled with coming back from Tommy John the following seasons, the pitch went dormant again.
Of the 3,069 pitches Ray threw in 2025, a sinker accounted for two of them. According to Baseball Savant, he threw the sinker once over his first 9 starts of the 2026 season — that sinker was bunted for a single by Washington’s Nassim Nunez on April 19th. He didn’t throw another for a month, until May 18th when Ray’s sinker usage jumped to 13% and the 4-seam usage fell to 17% against Arizona. He got shelled for 9 earned runs. But that didn’t discourage him at all, because pitching isn’t solely about pitch usage. It’s about when you use a pitch, and how it’s paired with others. According to Fangraphs pitch value measurement, Ray’s sinker was actually the bright spot in that dismal outing against the D-Backs (1.08 Runs above average per 100 pitches compared to the 4-seam’s -19.05). While it hasn’t been perfect, the pitch’s run value has been positive as its usage has increased over Ray’s return to form in June. In his first start against Atlanta, in Atlanta, Ray used it 31% of the time on his way to allowing just 2 hits over 6.1 scoreless innings. His success in that start wasn’t based on the dominance of this new fastball type, but how the sinker complimented the 4-seam or set-up his change-up.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMaybe that’s the key here: the change-up. On Sunday, 10 of the 22 outs on balls in play were off Ray’s change-up, and it should’ve been 11 if not for Matt Chapman’s 8th inning error. Sinker and change are a classic and sophisticated pairing. The wine-and-cheese of a pitcher’s mix, and the recent sinker renaissance for Ray was probably facilitated by his ongoing success and comfort throwing the offspeed.
For all the buzz Ray’s Tarik Skubal offspeed got in the offseason before 2025, it wasn’t particularly effective throughout the year. Spotty is a good descriptor. Ray used it 13% of the time, it accrued a -1 Run Value, or -0.2 RV/100.
Things are different now. So far this season, it’s statistically been his best pitch with a 2.6 RV/100 and accruing a Run Value of 7, putting it in the 99th percentile for offspeed offerings (as of Monday, 6/29). Ray throws the pitch exclusively to right-handers and they aren’t hitting it for average, nor are they slugging it for power. In 90 plate-appearances finished with the change-up this year, only three have resulted in an extra base hit. The last-one, a Corbin Carroll triple, dates back to that rough Arizona outing in mid-May.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA noticeable difference with the change-up is it’s been coming out of Ray’s hand a little harder, and because of that, it doesn’t fall away from righties as much as a change-up typically would. The offering is flatter than normal — like everything Ray throws. Mapping out its movement the pitch inhabits the same zone as the sinker, it just comes at the plate 6 beats slower on average. That’s a headache for a hitter, another thing to think about, another pitch-type and movement and speed to discern and deal with when facing Ray. The two offerings tunnel well off each other. They protect each other: the change-up providing back-up to the sinker, and vice-versa. Having them as known entities also helps to muddy the waters. Ray might never fully shake the hard fastball-slider reputation, but in 2026, he’s just not that guy anymore, which makes him harder to prep for, harder to sit back on and ambush, harder to frustrate and spoil, harder to chase off the mound.
And just in time for the trade deadline!