The Nationals are going to hire Corey Ray as first base coach, reports Spencer Nusbaum of The Washington Post. He had previously been working for the Cubs in the minor leagues. He will replace Gerardo Parra as the first base coach in Washington.
Ray, 31, was once a high profile prospect. The Brewers selected him fifth overall in the 2016 draft and signed him with a $4.125MM bonus. He clearly had incredible tools in terms of power and speed but he had trouble recognizing breaking pitches. This led to a lot of swing-and-miss, especially as he climbed the minor league ladder and faced better pitching. When he first reached Triple-A in 2019, he struck out in 38.7% of his plate appearances. He would lower than number in future seasons but still ended up walking back to the dugout about a third of the time.
His prospect stock dimmed 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 on the 40-man for a while but only got into one major league game, on April 24th of 2021, going 0-2 with one walk, one strikeout and one run scored. He was sent through waivers unclaimed in June of 2022. He became a minor league free agent at season’s end and didn’t sign anywhere else.
In the spring of 2023, the Cubs hired Ray to serve as a bench coach for their Single-A Myrtle Beach affiliate. Going into 2024, he was named manager of the club’s Arizona Complex League team. Nusbaum notes that Ray has also been serving as the organization’s baserunning coordinator.
The Nats are undergoing a major overhaul of their organization. Their ongoing rebuild has failed to show much progress and so just about 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 wouldn’t be continuing 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, catching/strategy coach Henry Blanco and Parra. Blake Butera was hired as the new manager a couple of days after that reporting. 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 just 31 and not too far removed from his playing days. Younger doesn’t necessarily mean better and the Nats are presumably looking at attributes other than just age but it is perhaps an interesting symbol of how the organization felt it was falling behind the times and needed to quickly modernize.
Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
The 2019 victory tour is over…
Baby Shark out, young Ray in.
He made it on base once!
Wow played 2 games= A great 1B coach
With almost 5 million dollar signing bonus Ray in the draft Ray is probably doing fine money wise.
I showed 4.8 Million for Ray. I think they were looking at Puk with 4.125 million.
Considering over 50% of that went to taxes and agent and other expenses, it might not be. Plus, you also have to factor in the ego of pro athletes not realizing that the first payday might be the only one. If he put the entire amount into an interest bearing money market account or even in something like cash CDs, then yeah he is probably fine. But what are the odds that a 21 year old was that responsible with money? Especially someone drafted 5th overall that has legitimate dreams of signing for many more millions over the next two decades.
Classic 1st round draft bust.
We need some advanced data for 1st and 3rd base coaches. What’s his wRC+ as a base coach?
I’m sure the stat boys are calculating his war as we type.
The Nats attempted stealing a lot of bases and were excessively caught over the last couple of years. This guy doesn’t seem to have the background to correct that as the first base coach. As a Nats fan, I’m very perplexed if not outright disappointed with this hire.
You’ve got the problem right–lots of bad baserunning. However, Ray was the baserunning coordinator as well as a minor league coach. Making him the first base coach works well–he can remind players of what he taught them.
Corey Ray is not credited with stealing a base in his one game in the major leagues. In six years in the minors he stole 89 bases and was caught stealing 29 times. I suppose that’s not too bad, coming out to about a 75% success rate (89 out of 118). Although it wasn’t at the big league level, I’d be happy to be proven wrong if he’s successful at helping improve the Nats’ base running.
I have always wondered why they dont bring their manager in Harrisbug to work with these guys on base running. Never have I seen a team run into more outs than this team. DeShields was one of the great base stealers of the 90s.
Remember watching him in spring training, dude had MASSIVE speed/power combo….
Good luck Corey.You must be pretty talented to warrant a 1 day mlb career to becoming an MLB coach.Long time coach Joey Amalfitano once told Joe Garagiola that becoming an MLB coach made him eligible for a huge mlb pension.Guys like Amalifitano,Charlie Metro and Joe (pound the ol’ Budweiser )Schultz say they played for 5k a year and will get pensions worth 20/30 times that amount.Nice to see guys who were grateful!