Servais did admit that the left-on-left component — Ray is a left-handed pitcher, Alvarez hits left-handed — played into the decision, but there was much more to it.
The Mariners, like other teams, don’t just rely on public-facing statistics to form their decisions. Each team has its own proprietary information it uses, shaped by analytics, scouting information and input from its baseball operations group and more, that helps them make decisions.
That process, details of which Servais refused to share, led them to use Ray against Alvarez.