San Francisco Giants trade RHP Robbie Ray to San Diego Padres for RHP Miguel Mendez and SS Joniel Hernandez.

Twenty-four long hours ago, when we were all much younger and more energized, I wrote about Kevin Gausman, noting he was arguably the most successful of the crop of five-year, ~$110 million starting pitcher contracts. I’m not going to remark on where Ray falls on that spectrum except to note that MLB.com headlined their write-up of this trade “Padres complete trade with Giants for former Cy Young winner Ray.” I’ll instead let you guess which adjective in that sentence is load-bearing.

Perhaps that’s unfair to Ray, who has an ERA beginning with a three for the second consecutive season. The Padres certainly saw something in him, such that they traded their no. 4 prospect for an expiring-contract starter who has produced 4.2 WARP across the last five years and sits in the red at present. That’s vintage A.J. Preller, though, baby! There’s an obvious disconnect between the output and the peripherals here, such that Ray’s’ ERA+ and DRA- match exactly despite one measuring in the positive direction and one in the negative.

There’s always the hope, surely prevalent in America’s Finest City at the moment, that Ray can continue to beat his peripherals in the great tradition of Eduardo Rodríguez. The following are some reasons to foreswear that hope: A 20.9% strikeout rate that’s a career-worst apart from his rookie season and singular 2013 outing; an 11.1% walk rate that’s nowhere near his career high but might look the worst it’s been in comparison to the punchouts; a home run per fly ball rate that’s down about 30% from his big-league average; a .261 BABIP and .487 SLGCON that are substantially lower than his usual rates; and an 18.2% whiff rate against fastballs.