Marco Raya is getting his shot in the MLB.<\/p>\n
The 2020 United South graduate was recently called up by the Minnesota Twins. Raya, a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher, will make his MLB debut the first time he takes the mound.<\/p>\n
Raya and left-hander Kody Funderburk are taking the roster spots of Kendry Rojas and Austin Voth. Rojas was optioned to the minors, while Voth was designated for assignment. Both pitchers appeared in a blowout loss on June 23.<\/p>\n
Since being selected in the fourth round of the 2020 MLB Draft, Raya has been one of the top arms in the Twins’ minor league system. The 6-foot-1, 170-pound right-hander spent much of his career as a starter but was moved to a bullpen role this season with the St. Paul Saints, Minnesota’s Triple-A affiliate.<\/p>\n
Across 39 innings as a reliever in Triple-A this season, Raya has posted a 5.54 ERA with 39 strikeouts. The ERA is somewhat inflated by one rough outing in which he allowed six runs while recording just one out. In his other 24 appearances, Raya owns a 4.18 ERA.<\/p>\n
For his minor league career, Raya has compiled a 4.56 ERA with 385 strikeouts across 363 innings.<\/p>\n
Raya’s four-seam fastball sits at 96 mph, while his slider and curveball typically range from 85-86 mph. His cutter and changeup sit around 90-91 mph.<\/p>\n
Raya was a standout at United South.<\/p>\n
As an All-American selection by the National Baseball Coaches Association during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Raya struck out 36 batters across 18 innings. He was selected No. 128 overall by Minnesota in the 2020 MLB Draft. It is the second-highest a Laredoan has ever been drafted, trailing only Freddie Benavides, who was chosen No. 50 overall by the Cincinnati Reds in 1987.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Raya is getting his shot in the MLB. The 2020 United South graduate was recently called up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[82550,5,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":["post-735308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-twins","tag-aud4h","tag-baseball","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-minnesotatwins","tag-mlb","tag-twins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116811513469159726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}