Sonny Gray gets candid on failed Yankees stint before trying to save Red Soxs season
When he waived his no-trade clause this winter to join the Red Sox, Sonny Gray endeared himself to his new Boston fans by memorably taking a shot at a fanbase with whom he did not get along.“It feels good to me to go to a place now where it’s easy to hate the Yankees,” Gray said in December, which fans in The Bronx surely will remember on Wednesday when he takes the mound as the biggest obstacle from the Yankees sweeping the wild-card series.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.
After dropping the opener, 9-0, Tuesday, the Red Sox will give their season to Gray for one of the bigger days of his life.Before the stakes were clear, he was reflective of some of the worst years of his life, which he said snowballed in a way that only became fully apparent in retrospect.Nearly a decade ago, Gray was shipped from the then-Oakland A’s to the Yankees at the 2017 trade deadline under circumstances that since have come under scrutiny.
Gray has said he “never” wanted to be a Yankee; Brian Cashman later responded that Gray had sent backchannel messages, through the Yankees minor league video coordinator, that he wanted to be in The Bronx and competing for a title.Regardless, Gray never was happy, did not pitch well and made his discomfort clear to Cashman only after the 2018 trade deadline, when he told Cashman he was surprised he was not dealt away and never wanted to be a Yankee in the first place.After that season, Cashman dealt Gray to the Reds, ending a 1 ¹/₂-year tenure in which Gray pitched to a 4.51 ERA and was hit particularly hard, by opponents and fans, at Yankee Stadium.And so four teams and eight seasons later, Gray pondered why New York and the Yankees were such a terrible fit.“I came from Oakland, and Oakland to here,” Gray said as part of a nearly three-minute reflection.
“I think that maybe during my time [in New York] there was a lot o...