LOS ANGELES -- The first thing Giants fans will notice when Robbie Ray makes his debut on Wednesday night is the pants.
Now 32 years old, Ray is listed at 6-foot-2 and 225 pounds, but he looks like he's still wearing the pair that was given to him when he broke into the majors with the Detroit Tigers a decade ago.
Walker Buehler, Spencer Strider and others have followed suit, but Ray was an early adopter, and at previous stops the tight pants were so notable that they inspired their own social media account. It's a quirk that Ray has plenty of fun with.
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"It's like a thing now," Ray said this spring during an interview that will run on Thursday's "Giants Talk" podcast. "A buddy of mine designed a T-shirt [in 2021] with the tight pants logo and my name underneath it, and we worked with 500 Level and did a charity donation and all the proceeds from that went straight to the Jays Care Foundation. I think we raised over $100,000 selling the tight pants T-shirt. It started out as a joke, but it actually went towards something."
When the rest of baseball was having trouble with the new jerseys this spring, Ray found that his fit perfectly. The snug pants have been with him throughout his rehab process, even over the last couple of days in Los Angeles, when he prepared for his Giants debut in 90-degree weather at Dodger Stadium.
When Ray finally does take the mound Wednesday, the second thing Giants fans will notice is that they'll hear him as much as they see him. Ray is a habitual grunter, exhaling loudly with every pitch. He even grunts when playing catch.
"I bet he grunts in his sleep," manager Bob Melvin said Tuesday, smiling.
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The Giants are hopeful that Ray has 80-90 grunts in him Wednesday. He threw 78 pitches in Triple-A over the weekend in his final rehab start, striking out seven and allowing just one hit. Ray's fastball was consistently 94-95 mph, and at times during his rehab, it was even firmer.
Melvin expects to see the normal Robbie Ray on Wednesday, although he will have some guardrails as he returns from Tommy John surgery and a flexor tendon repair.
"He doesn't want to really talk about that. If you know Robbie, he's all about just going out there and throwing as hard as he can for as long as he can," Melvin said. "We'll have some restrictions on him, but I'm not sure what the number is going to be."
It shouldn't be long before Ray is fully let loose, something the Giants have been waiting for since dealing Mitch Haniger, Anthony DeSclafani and cash to their old friends in Seattle in January. From the very beginning, they penciled Ray in for the start of the second half. He hit every checkpoint during his rehab, which started in the Arizona Complex League on June 4 and included 10 total rehab appearances.
"It was deliberate, yet there was a reason for it," Melvin said. "He had a couple of surgeries and we wanted to make sure he checked all the markers along the way, and he really did. There weren't any setbacks at all, which is pretty amazing. I think the first one in general when he goes out there in a big league game, you kind of have to be careful with him. I'm not sure there's going to be any pushing with going an extra inning if he's got 10 pitches left or something like that.
"We'll get the first one under his belt and go from there, but pitch count wise, he's going to go out there for close to a full complement. His process was fantastic. He took the lead from the training staff and didn't try to push it too much. Here he is at a time frame that we kind of expected."
Ray won't have to give the Giants much in the second half to make that trade a big win. DeSclafani was moved from Seattle to Minnesota right away and had season-ending elbow surgery during spring training. Haniger has hit .206 with a .615 OPS and just eight homers in his return to Seattle.
The Mariners had plenty of young pitching entering the year and wanted to reallocate resources. That worked out well for Farhan Zaidi and the Giants, who chased Ray in 2021 before he signed a five-year, $115 million deal with the Mariners.
At the time, he was the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, but he made just 33 starts in Seattle before his elbow flared up. He knew the Mariners were heading in a different direction after last season, but he was still surprised by the trade.
"It did kind of catch me off guard just because I am rehabbing and I'm in the middle of Tommy John surgery," Ray said this spring. "But San Francisco was one of the teams that pursued me in free agency, so we kind of already had a relationship there and Farhan kind of knew who I was. It ended up working out in his favor, because the Giants didn't offer me the extra year that Seattle had offered me and now they're getting me for the amount of years that they want."
Ray's contract goes two more seasons after this one, although he has an opt-out clause that he can trigger if the next two months go well. In that respect, he's similar to Blake Snell, the other Cy Young winner the Giants added to their rotation.
Finally healthy, Snell has looked like his old self in recent weeks. The Giants are hoping for the same from Ray, except with a bit more noise.
"It's entertaining," Melvin said of the grunting. "There are reasons for it. I think even when he plays catch out here and he's playing long toss, and we saw it even in spring training, that's kind of who he is. Tight pants and grunting."
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