{"id":315231,"date":"2025-11-28T22:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T22:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/315231\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T22:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T22:50:09","slug":"red-soxs-sonny-gray-had-interesting-yankees-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/315231\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox’s Sonny Gray Had Interesting Yankees Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former New York Yankees starter Sonny Gray<\/a> is back in the American League East<\/a>, and that has some drudging up memories from his last tour of duty in the division.<\/p>\n

The Boston Red Sox acquired Gray<\/a> from the St. Louis Cardinals in a pre-Thanksgiving trade.<\/a><\/p>\n

Gray has pitched for five MLB clubs: the A’s, Minnesota Twins, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees.<\/p>\n

Of the five, his least successful time came in the Bronx, where posted a 4.51 ERA<\/a>. That’s significantly higher than in any of the small-market stops during his 13-year MLB career.<\/p>\n

Under Pressure<\/p>\n

His struggles in New York have some wondering if he can withstand the pressure that comes with playing in another big-market city<\/a> like Boston following this week’s trade.<\/p>\n

But former Yankees teammate and catcher Erik Kratz<\/a> isn’t one of those people.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was real quick to play the narrative of, \u2018Oh, big market, the pressure got to him,\u2019\u201d Kratz said on “Foul Territory,”<\/a> according to The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey<\/a>. \u201cBut I was there watching him. It wasn\u2019t the pressure of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blame Game<\/p>\n

Instead, Kratz laid the blame for Gray’s failures on pitching coach Larry Rothschild<\/a> and a “contradiction of pitch usage.” Kratz said Rothschild wanted Gray to use his slider more, while the right-hander wanted to feature more of his curveball.<\/p>\n

The Yankees sent Gray to the Reds<\/a> ahead of the 2019 season. Since then, he posted two of his three All-Star seasons and had a pair of top-10 finishes in Cy Young voting.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Sep 13, 2025; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Sonny Gray (54) throws against the Milwaukee Brewers in the first inning at American Family Field. Mandatory Credit: Benny Sieu-Imagn Images | Benny Sieu-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

He even got some National League MVP votes in 2023<\/a>, when he went 8-8 with a 2.79 ERA in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

While not flashy, Gray is extremely reliable. He’s made at least 27 starts in each season going back to 2017 (the 2020 COVID season not withstanding).<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old has struck out least 200 batters in each of the last two seasons and has thrown at least 180 innings in two of the last three years.<\/p>\n

That’s a far cry from his days in the Bronx. The Yankees acquired Gray in a deal with the A’s ahead of the 2017 trade deadline. <\/a><\/p>\n

After the trade, he went 4-7 with a 3.72 ERA in 11 regular-season starts for the Yankees and made another pair of starts during the 2017 postseason.<\/p>\n

But the wheels came off in 2018, with Gray going 11-9 with a 4.90 ERA, leading the Yankees to banish him in the bullpen<\/a> before eventually parting ways after the season.<\/p>\n

Make sure to bookmark Yankees On SI to get all your daily New York Yankees news, interviews, breakdowns and more!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former New York Yankees starter Sonny Gray is back in the American League East, and that has some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-315231","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-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315231","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=315231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}