Robbie Ray returned to the mound on Wednesday night for the first time in more than a year.
Though his strange no-hitter bid came up short, Ray successfully led the San Francisco Giants to an 8-3 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ray threw five innings, had eight strikeouts and, despite the fact that he allowed a run in a wild first inning, didn’t give up a single hit in the win.
Ray’s five-inning stretch was the longest no-hit bid by a Giants starter in his debut with the team since 1960, via MLB.com Sarah Langs.
Ray joined the Giants this past offseason in a trade from the Seattle Mariners, who dealt the 2021 Cy Young winner after he underwent Tommy John surgery last May. He’s been recovering ever since, though the 32-year-old started his rehab stint in early June.
He looked a bit rusty on the mound in the first inning. Ray threw more than 30 pitches in the first inning, where he hit two batters, walked two others and threw a pair of wild pitches — one of which allowed Dodgers catcher Will Smith to score.
Once he got settled in, though, Ray was back to his old self. Ray cruised through the next four innings and faced the minimum 12 batters during that stretch to keep the Dodgers without a hit. By that point, after 86 pitches, the Giants opted to pull Ray from the game.
The Dodgers finally broke-up the no-hitter in the seventh inning after Chris Taylor hit a double — though he left the game after he injured his left groin while running to second base. The Giants made it out of that inning unscathed, and then put up six runs in the eighth inning off RBIs from Mike Yastrzemski, Patrick Bailey, Jorge Soler, Heliot Ramos and Matt Chapman to completely break the game open. Lamonte Wade just barely made it past the tag at home to score the sixth run of the inning, too, after Chapman’s single.
That suddenly had San Francisco up 8-1. While the Dodgers scored twice more the rest of the way, it was too late. The Giants quickly closed out the five-run win, which marked just their second in the last six games. The Giants now hold a 49-54 record.
The loss dropped the Dodgers to 61-42 on the season, and it snapped a five game win streak after they swept the Boston Red Sox last weekend. Even with the loss, the Dodgers still hold a commanding lead in the NL West.