{"id":28787,"date":"2025-07-29T00:56:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28787\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T00:56:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:56:04","slug":"sonny-gray-unlikely-to-waive-no-trade-clause-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28787\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonny Gray Unlikely To Waive No-Trade Clause This Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cardinals ace Sonny Gray<\/a> was briefly in trade rumors this past offseason but quickly quashed them when he told president of baseball operations John Mozeliak that he wasn\u2019t keen on waiving the full no-trade clause in his contract. Gray\u2019s name has at least tangentially popped back up on the rumor mill with the July deadline now just three days away. The right-hander tells Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a> that Mozeliak recently revisited the subject of Gray waiving his no-trade clause.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old Gray declined to elaborate beyond the mere fact that he and Mozeliak had recently talked about the matter. However, MLB.com\u2019s John Denton reports<\/a> that during that conversation, the right-hander again conveyed that he prefers to stay in St. Louis \u2014 at least for the remainder of the current season. Barring a late change of heart, it seems Gray will remain with the Cardinals for the balance of the regular season.<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u2019s Katie Woo reported<\/a> this weekend that the Cardinals would \u201centertain\u201d offers on Gray and that Mozeliak had gauged interest from some clubs. Presumably, that was done in an effort to provide Gray with as much information as possible when having this conversation with him. There\u2019s no indication that the Cardinals spent significant time workshopping trade offers before talking with Gray, but Mozeliak & Co. have surely fielded a wide swath of calls and texts regarding the availability of a notable portion of the roster.<\/p>\n

A trade of Gray would likely have been difficult to piece together, though not necessarily due to his performance. It\u2019s true that the veteran righty has turned in ugly outings in consecutive starts, ballooning his ERA from 3.50 to 4.33 over his past two outings thanks to a combined 14 earned runs in 8 1\/3 innings. However, he\u2019s also less than a month removed from an 11-strikeout one-hit shutout of the Guardians and obviously has a lengthy track record as a high-quality big league starter. Recent ERA spike notwithstanding, Gray boasts a 26.7% strikeout rate and 4% walk rate on the year \u2014 both excellent marks, with the latter in particular registering as elite. Metrics like FIP (3.02) and SIERA (3.09) portray him far more favorably than his recently inflated earned run average.<\/p>\n

Gray\u2019s contract is another matter entirely \u2014 and a far more complicating factor, at that. The former AL Cy Young runner-up\u2019s three-year, $75MM deal is heavily backloaded, which would surely prove a hurdle in any trade talks. He\u2019s in the second season of that pact but earned just $10MM in year one of the deal. He\u2019s making $25MM this year, with about $8.333MM yet to be paid out as of this writing, and he\u2019s in line for a $35MM salary next year. Gray\u2019s contract also contains a $30MM club option for 2027 that comes with a $5MM buyout (which is included in his guarantee).<\/p>\n

As such, even though Gray is past the halfway point of the contract, he\u2019s still owed a whopping $48.333MM for the remaining one and one-third seasons on his contract. That\u2019s nearly 65% of the contract\u2019s total value. The $5MM buyout on his 2027 option is deferred over a five-year period, but that does little to reduce the sizable net-present value of what\u2019s left on the contract.<\/p>\n

If the Cardinals were willing to take on a notable portion of that sum, they\u2019d obviously be able to extract a better net return. As things stand, one-plus year of Gray at nearly $50MM doesn\u2019t exactly afford surplus value. Even if a team valued Gray as a $30MM-per-year starting pitcher, his contract would be slightly underwater. All of that is rendered moot by Gray\u2019s preference to stay in St. Louis. The Cardinals could revisit the situation in the offseason, but Gray would still be owed a $35MM salary and that deferred $5MM buyout. It\u2019s a hefty sum, particularly entering his age-36 season.<\/p>\n

That said, the Cardinals could have some extra motivation to get a deal done this offseason. One of the driving factors behind their dormant offseason was a desire to not only trim payroll but to clear playing time for younger players who could be core pieces. The Cards already opened up one rotation spot for young Michael McGreevy<\/a> when they designated Erick Fedde<\/a> for assignment (and subsequently traded him to Atlanta).<\/p>\n

Moving Gray would further open up innings for young arms while simultaneously trimming notable money from the payroll. If the Cardinals were to eat enough of Gray\u2019s contract in the offseason, they could extract some genuine prospect talent. That\u2019s not necessarily the goal, however. Goold wrote in a chat with readers today<\/a> that the organization would look to clear as much of Gray\u2019s salary as possible \u2014 doing so \u201cahead of any other considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cardinals ace Sonny Gray was briefly in trade rumors this past offseason but quickly quashed them when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,24614,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-28787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sonny-gray","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}