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San Francisco Giants: Ray Black is Already a Big Part of the Bullpen

By Sean Bialaszek

SEATTLE, WA - JULY 25: Reliever Ray Black #62 of the San Francisco Giants delivers a pitch during the seventh inning of a game against the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field on July 25, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. The Mariners won the game 3-2. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)
SEATTLE, WA - JULY 25: Reliever Ray Black #62 of the San Francisco Giants delivers a pitch during the seventh inning of a game against the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field on July 25, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. The Mariners won the game 3-2. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images) /
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He’s only 10 appearances into his big league career, but Ray Black is already a big part of the San Francisco Giants’ bullpen.

The trade the San Francisco Giants made with the Texas Rangers on July 8th was an extremely important one. Not only did it give them some breathing room in regards to the luxury cap, it allowed them the opportunity to bring up a pair of young players who could play big parts in their future. One of those players was Ray Black, and the big right-hander has already established himself as one of the best options out of Bruce Bochy’s bullpen.

It was a long road to get to the big leagues, with constant injuries leading to thoughts of retirement, but he stuck with it and turned a corner this year. Black started in AA with Richmond, and was dominant. That earned him a promotion to AAA Sacramento, and he dominated there as well. When Cory Gearrin was jettisoned to the Rangers, opening a spot in the bullpen, Black was the one to get the call.

His debut outing didn’t go well. He walked a pair before giving up a three-run home run, but he put that behind him quickly and has been unhittable, literally, since. On Thursday night in the series opener against the Diamondbacks, Black completed a reliever no-hitter. He reached, then surpassed, nine consecutive innings since allowing that three-run home run in his debut.

As he’s now reached 9.2 innings in his still budding big league career, that shot into McCovey Cove remains the only hit against him. He’s walked three batters since the debut, but hitters have just not been able to crack the hit column. He’s struck out 13 batters in that stretch as well.

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Thursday’s game was Black’s finest work yet, and not just because of the pretend no-hitter that he finished. With the Giants holding on to a 3-1 lead, Bochy turned to Black to pitch the seventh inning. In just his 10th appearance as a major leaguer, the right-hander was tasked with facing the middle of Arizona’s lineup: Paul Goldschmidt, A.J. Pollock, and Steven Souza Jr.

Black passed the test, and he did so with flying colors. He painted a 99.4-mph fastball on the low outside corner to Goldschmidt, and the notorious Giant Killer couldn’t catch up to it. Pollock was fooled by an 83.9-mph slider in a similar location, and couldn’t make the adjustment in time. After those two strikeouts, Souza could do nothing but pop a 99-mph fastball straight up to the second baseman.

That turned out to be the biggest inning of the game. The Giants had that slim lead and the Diamondbacks had the meat coming up, but Black shut it down. He threw the first and only 1-2-3 inning of the evening for the Giants, and allowed the Giants to go into the eighth and pile on some insurance runs.

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    • That’s been the story for Black so far in his short time at the highest level. He’s been able to power his way past hitters, and when the batters have managed to make contact, loud contact has been few and far between. The 82.4 mph average exit velocity against Black is the lowest on the team.

    Black has dominated hitters with elite fastball velocity. His average fastball comes in at 97.7 mph, about a full mile faster than Reyes Moronta, who’s second-best on the Giants. He’s tied for the eighth-hardest fastball in baseball. But he combines that with elite spin rate on all his pitches as well.

    He leads the Giants in spin rate on his fastball, slider, and curveball, and ranks right near the very top of the game’s leaderboard on each pitch. His fastball has a spin rate of 2,624 revolutions per minute, fourth-best in the big leagues. The curveball, at 3,224 RPM, and the slider, at 3,129 RPM, both are second-best across baseball (former Giant Kyle Crick leads baseball in slider spin rate).

    Having Black develop into a strong late-inning presence would be huge for the Giants. He has all the tools to be a lockdown reliever, and it would help ease the burden on other guys in the bullpen who have been relied on heavily. It would allow Bochy to give more breaks to Sam Dyson (who is tied for second in the National League in appearances), and Reyes Moronta and Tony Watson (both tied for ninth), as well as Will Smith and Mark Melancon, who are still fairly fresh off stints on the disabled list.

    Next. Joey Bart is an All-Star. dark

    It took him a long time to get healthy enough to make it here, but Black finally looks like a guy who can be a huge part of this bullpen for a long time. That’s a major development no matter how the rest of the season goes for the Giants.

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