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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – If it can be heard at Oracle Park, Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, and Rogers Centre, it can certainly resonate throughout intimate and quaint Scottsdale Stadium.
“Hooffttt.”
“Ehhhheh.”
“Agghh.”
“Hmpfff.”
Or however you’d suggest spelling a Robbie Ray grunt.
It’s noticeable. It’s distinctive. It’s idiosyncratic. And it serves a purpose for the Giants’ lefty and No. 2 starter behind ace Logan Webb, who’ll start the March 25 opener against the Yankees.
In the Giants’ camp, Ray is the least-talked-about starter but will play a major role in any 2026 success story. With Webb dominating in the World Baseball Classic, and Landen Roupp eyeing his first full season in the rotation, and newcomers Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle trying to find their way, Ray is going about his business as usual.
Getting in his innings. Elevating his pitch count. Working on refining his fastball, slider, curve, and changeup. And making noise like no one else.
“It’s just a way for me to kind of put everything into every pitch that I have,” Ray said, explaining his grunts that everyone on site in Scottsdale hears, from the box seats to the berm beyond the outfield wall to the adjacent practice fields. “It’s similar to a tennis player serving. It’s full force, full everything, every pitch.”
Ray, the eldest Giant (34) and the team’s longest-tenured big-leaguer (entering his 13th season), is fully comfortable grunting as part of his exhale to end his follow-through. As he’ll tell you, it enhances his breathing process, provides a mechanism to release energy, and generates extra zip on his pitches.
In Ray’s last start, I was on grunt watch. As he grunted his way through four hitless innings, I sat a few rows behind the plate with a note pad and decibel reader, which I downloaded into my phone to determine the noise levels.
It was hardly scientific, but results were uncovered nonetheless. First off, he grunted louder and more distinctive on fastballs than off-speed pitches, and he was especially loud in two-strike counts, perhaps sensing a strikeout.
Granted, Ray’s grunts, like all his pitches, aren’t in midseason form. Spring training is for working out the kinks and the squawks, and he said after the start that he’s tweaking his slider and was more concerned about its shape than its velocity. His curve and changeup were especially sharp.
1 day ago
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Friday, Mar. 6
But in our unofficial sampling, those pitches didn’t produce the decibel readings like the fastball. You might wonder, then, is Ray tipping his pitches? Can the batter and bench – along with the scouts in the stands, seated alongside me – determine what’s coming based on the frequencies of the grunts?
That’s an easy one: No. The beauty of Ray’s grunts is that they aren’t heard during his delivery but after the follow-through – not because the velocity of his pitches exceeds the speed of sound, obviously. But because Ray grunts after he releases the pitch, sometimes just as the ball reaches the plate or even Patrick Bailey’s mitt.
“I exhale, and [the grunt] just kind of comes out,” Ray said. “So if you’re listening for it, then you’re probably too late.”
I was about 150 feet away from Ray, and when he grunted, the decibel level increased from the 60s (the ballpark’s soothing white noise) to the 70s. One example: 67.3 to 75.5.
More than that, the decibels were sharper with his fastball. That was especially noticeable afterward when I watched video of Ray pitching and the decibel reader hit the 90s. I mentioned the grunt differential to Ray, but he wasn’t buying it. Again, these are simply spring training grunts.
“I think it’s subconscious,” he said. “I go back and watch games, and sometimes I don’t do it at all on my fastball, sometimes I’ll do it loud on a curveball or changeup. I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason behind it,”
The decibel reader would have provided more accurate results if I were closer to Ray, perhaps similar to the 100-decible-plus grunts we’ve heard over the years in tennis from Jimmy Connors to Monica Seles to Maria Sharapova. Apparently the record holder is Michelle Larcher de Brito, 109 decibels at Wimbledon.
Martina Navratilova has suggested grunting in tennis is a form of cheating, arguing it’s a hindrance to the opponent if he/she depends on the sound of the ball hitting the racket to react to the shot.
Nobody’s accusing Ray of cheating, of course, but Bailey did say “it’s an edge” and added, “I don’t think he cares what other people think about him. He knows he’s better than whoever’s in the box, and it’s a little edge that way.”
Third baseman Matt Chapman’s take: “We make fun of him all the time, but it’s all good fun. It’s kind of Robbie’s thing. If it helps him, and it helps us, I’m all good with it. When he goes out there with his tight pants and he’s grunting at you and he strikes you out, it’s not fun.”
Other pitchers might grunt, but nothing like Ray. Roupp said he wouldn’t even try it.
“I definitely can’t do it. It would throw me off for sure,” Roupp said. “It’s too much to think about, yelling every single time. He’s used to it. It comes natural to him. He’s super competitive, and it’s pretty cool watching him from the dugout screaming out there.”
Ray started grunting in 2016 as a Diamondback after what he called “the worst pregame bullpen of my entire career.” It was in Miami, and on his way from the bullpen to the dugout, he said, pitching coach Mike Butcher told him, “I want you to throw every pitch as hard as you can for as long as you can.”
Voilá. Ray began grunting, and his velocity and intensity – along with his strikeout rate – soared. He became an All-Star the following year and a Cy Young Award winner a few years later. Last year, his second as a Giant, he was an All-Star again.
I asked Ray why other pitchers don’t grunt more. It seems it can be a self-conscious thing. Like shooting free throws underhanded, Rick Barry style. Athletes can be hesitant to try something new if it’s not the norm.
Ray never was tentative, so he continues to grunt and succeed.
“I’m trying to go out there and put up zeroes, and the best way to do that is with a closer mentality,” Ray said. “I try to treat every inning like I’m closing a game, like it’s the ninth inning, but over a longer period of time. My workout regimen and throwing program allows me to build that standard, to be able to withstand it for a full game.”