Sonny Gray lied behind scenes about Yankees Brian Cashmans claim infuriates agent

Sonny Gray’s “lies” landed him in New York.That’s what Yankees GM Brian Cashman claimed on Sunday after the veteran pitcher said at his Red Sox introductory press conference last week that he “never wanted to go to” the Yankees and that “It feels good to me to go to a place where it’s easy to hate” them.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

Cashman told reporters from the Winter Meetings in Orlando that Gray privately told people in 2017 — including the Yankees’ minor-league video coordinator, who was his college roommate at Vanderbilt — that he wanted to go to the Yankees.“When he was with the (Oakland) A’s, he was telling (him), ‘You’ve got to get me over to the Yankees, tell Cash…I want out of Oakland, I want to win a world championship, blah, blah, blah.’” Cashman said.The Yankees did acquire him from the A’s at the 2017 deadline, and he had a rough year in The Bronx — particularly struggling in home starts — when Cashman said that Gray told him he was surprised that the Yankees did not trade him at the 2018 deadline.“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here,” Cashman said.

“He hates New York.This is the worst place.

He just sits in his hotel room.… I said, ‘Well, it’s a little late now.’ So then I said, ‘But you said you wanted to be traded here.’“He said, ‘My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that.

He told me to lie.It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s certain places I don’t want to go to, so just go out and make sure you say …’ “So he told me after being with us for a very long time.”McKinnis strongly denied Cashman’s version of events in comments to The Athletic.“So, Brian is trying to make people believe I told Sonny to, in Cashman’s words, ‘lie’ to the minor-league video guy to try to get Sonny to the Yankees — even though, per C...