ORLANDO, Fla. – The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have butted heads in a plethora of ways over the last 125 years.
This time, it’s a ‘He said, he said’ between new Red Sox starter Sonny Gray and longtime Yankees general manager Brian Cashman.
Gray revisited his miserable tenure with the 2017-18 Yankees last week in his first Red Sox press conference, saying, “I never wanted to go there in the first place … it feels good to me to go to a place now where, you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees.”
On Sunday night, Cashman told reporters at MLB Winter Meetings that while pitching for the then-Oakland Athletics, Gray had lied “to a number of different people” about wanting to become a Yankee.
“When he was with the A’s, he was telling our minor-league video coordinator, ‘You got to get me over to the Yankees,’ ” Cashman said. “Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. I want out of Oakland. I want a championship.”
New Red Sox pitcher reflects on Yankees stint: ‘I never wanted to go there”
Gray enjoyed success with the A’s in the first five of his 13 big-league seasons. He made his major league debut in 2013, posted a 3.42 ERA over 114 regular-season games with the California club, and in 2015 was an All-Star and third-runner up for American League Cy Young.
The A’s were fairly successful his first two seasons, winning the AL West in ‘13 and earning a Wild Card the following year, but the downward spiral came hard and fast. They went 212-274 over Gray’s final three seasons, finishing last in their division each year and never winning more than 75 games.
When the Yankees acquired Gray midway through the ‘17 season, he told reporters, “I couldn’t be happier to be here.”
Apparently he would have been much happier elsewhere, and after the Yankees did not trade him at the ‘18 deadline, he met with Cashman at the stadium and enlightened him.
“He told me he never wanted to be here,” said Cashman. “He hates New York. (He said,) ‘This is the worst place.’ He just sits in his hotel room.”
The whole gambit, Cashman said, had been Gray’s agent Bo McKinnis’ idea.
“‘(McKinnis) told me to do that,’” Cashman said Gray told him, explaining that his agent claimed he didn’t want his client to express negativity about specific teams ahead of his free agency. “‘(He) told me to lie.’”
Stunned, Cashman said he replied, “ ‘I wish you would have told me well beforehand.’ ” He told Gray he would try to trade him that offseason, and in January ‘19, sent the righty to the Cincinnati Reds.
In a pair of statements to The Athletic, McKinnis dissected and refuted several of the Yankees GM’s claims, saying the supposed free-agency strategy “makes zero sense.”
“If a player does not want to play for a particular club — thus potentially not performing at their best if they were with that team — it does not help their career and future free agency to lie their way into a trade to that club,” the agent said.
Gray’s 4.51 ERA with the Yankees, his worst mark with any of his five teams thus far, supports his agent’s claim. So, too, do his numbers in the seven seasons since leaving New York: 184 starts between the Reds, Minnesota Twins, and St. Louis Cardinals, a combined 3.51 ERA, 3.31 FIP, and 1.153 WHIP, with 1,136 strikeouts across 1,017.1 innings. He averaged 28.3 starts and over 160 innings in the six 162-game seasons in this span. (Gray made 11 starts in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic limited MLB to a 60-game season.)
“The words, ‘I want out of Oakland,’ have never been said by Sonny,” added McKinnis in his second statement. “He loved his time with the A’s.”
How Gray will feel after his Red Sox tenure, which could include the 2027 season if they pick up his club option, remains to be seen. Yet it is already different from his Yankees tenure in one crucial respect.
Gray had no control over his destiny when the A’s dealt him to the Yankees during his years of arbitration eligibility, but his current contract included a no-trade clause.
If he hadn’t wanted to pitch for the Red Sox, he wouldn’t be shipping up to Boston.
