Ray, 31, was once a high-profile prospect. The Brewers selected him fifth overall in the 2016 draft and signed him with a $4.125 million bonus. He clearly had incredible tools in terms of power and speed, but he struggled with identifying breaking pitches. This led to a lot of swing-and-misses, especially as he climbed the minor league ladder and got better pitching. When he first reached Triple-A in 2019, he struck out in 38.7% of his plate appearances. He would be lower than that number in future seasons, but still walked back to the dugout about a third of the time.
His potential stock dropped, but the Brewers still didn’t want to lose him in the 2019 Rule 5 draft, so they added him to the 40-man roster. He stuck with the 40-man for a while, but only appeared in one Major League game, on April 24, 2021, going 0-2 with one walk, one strikeout and one run scored. He was granted unclaimed waivers in June 2022. At the end of the season, he became a minor league free agent and did not sign anywhere else.
In the spring of 2023, the Cubs hired Ray to serve as bench coach for their Single-A Myrtle Beach affiliate. Entering 2024, he was named manager of the club’s Arizona Complex League team. Nusbaum notes that Ray has also served as the organization’s baserunning coordinator.
The Nats are undergoing a major overhaul of their organization. Their continued rebuilding hasn’t made much progress, so pretty much everything is on the chopping block. President of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez were fired midseason. In September, Paul Toboni was hired as the club’s new president of baseball operations.
In October it was reported that interim manager Miguel Cairo would not continue in that role, while six coaches would only be brought back if the new manager wanted them on the staff. Those six were pitching coach Jim Hickey, hitting coach Darnell Coles, third base coach Ricky Gutierrez, bullpen coach Ricky Bones, catcher/strategy coach Henry Blanco and Parra. Blake Butera was hired as the new manager a few days after that report. Since then, the Nats have hired Michael Johns as bench coach, Simon Mathews as pitching coach and now Ray as first base coach.
Fresh blood seems to be the name of the game. Johns is 50 years old, but Toboni is 35, Butera 33 and Mathews 30. As mentioned, Ray is only 31 and not far removed from his playing days. Younger doesn’t necessarily mean better and the Nats are likely looking at other attributes than just age, but it may be an interesting symbol of how the organization felt it was falling behind and needed to modernize quickly.
Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
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