LOS ANGELES — Robbie Ray’s first time back on a big-league mound in 16 months was a big deal. Getting off of it again, it turned out, was equally important.
In an 8-3 win over the Dodgers on a warm Wednesday evening, the 32-year-old former Cy Young winner boasted a box score that would suggest there was no rust whatsoever, no sign that the past year and a half had been filled with an arduous and methodical rehab process rather than reps from the pitching rubber.
Helping deliver the Giants their first win in six tries this season at Dodger Stadium, Ray did not surrender a hit over five innings while limiting the Dodgers to one run and striking out eight. Proudly surveying the 54,070 in attendance from the top railing of the dugout after completing his first game action since March 31, 2023, before surgeries to repair the ulnar collateral ligament and flexor tendon in his throwing elbow, Ray eventually found his wife and kids, smiled and waved.
“I was excited. I was amped up. I was ready to go. It was just a flurry of emotions all around,” Ray said. “To have my wife and my two oldest kids here too, for them to be able to experience it, the long comeback and the support that they’ve shown me, there’s no words that can describe that. Just a super special night all around.”
Midway through the first inning, when Sean Hjelle raced from his position in the bullpen and began to get warm, it did not appear Ray was on his way to earning that sweet satisfaction. The call was made to the bullpen after Ray issued ball four to Andy Pages, walking in a run to open a 1-0 Dodgers advantage.
Grunting all the while, Ray might have been a little too amped up, he acknowledged, comparing the butterflies to Opening Day.
“I wasn’t going to let him throw 40 pitches (in the first inning),” manager Bob Melvin said. “And then all of a sudden, he found his arm slot and got into rhythm and was what we want. It was a completely different guy in the second inning.”
Pages was the Dodgers’ sixth batter of the game and the fifth that Ray put on base. He hit two other batters with sliders that ran inside. Pounded the dirt with a wild pitch that allowed them advance. Put another on base with four more balls. The one out he had recorded, a 102 mph, 351-foot pop fly from Shohei Ohtani that found Michael Conforto’s glove on the left-field warning track, would have been a home run in 13 other ballparks.
And then, something clicked.
Ray required 33 pitches to get out of the inning, finding the strike zone on only 15 of them (45.4%), but cruised through the next four frames on only 53 pitches — 36 for strikes (67.9%). After the free pass to Pages, Ray broke out his knuckle curve to fan Miguel Vargas, the first of 14 consecutive batters he retired before handing his unlikely no-hit bid over to the Giants’ bullpen. He powered a 96 mph fastball past Ohtani for the final out of his outing.
“I knew that if I got through the first inning, then I could settle down and everything would turn around,” Ray said. “My stuff in the bullpen felt really good. It was just a matter of getting that first one out of the way and rolling from there.”
Guiding the outing from behind the plate was veteran backup Curt Casali, who also caught Ray when the two were in Seattle. He paid Ray a pair of mound visits during the first inning, with pitching coach Bryan Price joining the second one, and consulted with him in the dugout in between innings.
“You could have expected something like that, you know, over-trying,” Casali said. “We’re grown men but we still do stupid things every once in a while, too. This is a big place for him to make his Giants debut. Sometimes that adrenaline gets the best of you. But we made some really good adjustments in the second inning and to get out of the first inning with only one run, I thought was really impressive.”
While Melvin said Ray was “close to coming out” in the first inning, Ray said he “didn’t really think about” his rising pitch count.
“Once we sat down back on the bench, we just kind of took a moment and figured it out,” Casali said. “His direction was a little bit off. He hit a couple guys in the feet. That just tells me he’s a little bit fast, a little bit overthrowing. He’s smart enough to realize what he’s doing. Sometimes all it takes is one pitch, getting out of that first inning, sitting down, collecting yourself and then just realizing you made it through that first inning healthy, arm’s good, let’s just go play baseball.”
The Dodgers didn’t notch a hit until the seventh inning, when Chris Taylor (.164 batting average) swung at the first pitch he saw from Tyler Rogers and shot it into right-center field for a double. They only got on the board for a second time in the eighth, when Heliot Ramos and Mike Yastrzemski allowed a double from Freddie Freeman to fall between them, driving home newly signed shortstop Nick Ahmed, who singled to lead off the inning for only their second hit of the game.
For once, offense wasn’t an issue for the Giants, who drew nine walks and banged out nine hits while scoring more than three runs for the first time in 12 days. Their final total was their most runs they had scored in a game away from Oracle Park in a month and a half, since a 9-3 win in Texas on June 5.
Matt Chapman opened the scoring with his 14th home run of the season, a solo shot to straightaway center field, tying him with Ramos for the team lead, and drove in a second run to bookend a six-run eighth inning that put the game on ice. Yastrzemski also drove in a pair while reaching base safely four of his five trips to the plate, singling home Tyler Fitzgerald in the fourth. Fitzgerald’s home run streak was snapped at five games but he still doubled, scored a run and worked a pair of walks.
“We had all the momentum,” Casali said. “In a place like this, it’s a hard place to play and a hard place to win, to get that momentum on our side through five innings, I thought was huge. … Momentum is huge in this ballpark. To have it for the first half of the ballgame with your starter is a big asset, especially coming off two losses.”
Notable
To clear room for Ray on the 40-man roster, the Giants transferred RHP Keaton Winn (elbow) to the 60-day injured list, and it doesn’t sound as though the 26-year-old right-hander has a strong chance of touching a mound again this season. “He’s going to get another opinion,” Melvin said. “So yeah, the longer this goes on, the more difficult it will be for him to pitch again this year, but hopefully that’s not the case.”
Up next
The series finale and the final matchup this season between the two rivals pits RHP Logan Webb (7-8, 3.59) against LHP Clayton Kershaw, who will be making his season debut. In a rare weekday matinee at Dodger Stadium, first pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m.
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