Red Sox<\/a>-Yankees rivalry has a new villain in the Bronx.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Upon his trade two weeks ago from St. Louis to Boston, Gray said \u201cit feels good to me to go to a place now where\u2026it\u2019s easy to hate the Yankees.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
During his rocky year-and-a-half with the Yanks, \u201cI just didn\u2019t feel like I was allowed to go out there and be Sonny,\u2019\u2019 Gray said at his introductory Red Sox press conference.<\/p>\n
Cashman countered by saying Gray\u2019s personal misery in the Bronx was never expressed until hours after the 2018 trade deadline had passed, when it was too late.<\/p>\n
According to Cashman, the right-hander assumed he\u2019d be traded by the Yanks. When he wasn\u2019t, Gray requested a private meeting with the GM.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat\u2019s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York, this is the worst place, he sits in his hotel room \u2013 he told me all this stuff,\u2019\u2019 Cashman said Sunday at MLB\u2019s Winter Meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish he told me beforehand,\u2019\u2019 said Cashman, adding that he wished he knew Gray\u2019s stance \u201cbefore we even tried to acquire\u2019\u2019 the coveted starter from Oakland at the 2017 trade deadline.<\/p>\n
After the 2018 season, Cashman eventually sent Gray to Cincinnati for minor league infielder Shed Long Jr. and a competitive balance draft pick.<\/p>\n
A three-time All-Star with a career 3.58 ERA, Gray, 36, posted a 15-16 mark and 4.51 ERA in 41 games (34 starts) as a Yankee.<\/p>\n
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According to Cashman, Gray feigned interest in the Yankees to increase his market.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie,\u2019\u2019 Cashman said Gray told him, since \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be good for my free agency to say there\u2019s places I don\u2019t want to go.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
That lie, per Cashman, was being communicated by Gray to \u201ca number of different people\u2019\u2019 and led to the Yankees feeling they\u2019d accurately read Gray\u2019s intent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis college roommate at Vanderbilt was our minor league video coordinator. So, when he was with the (Oakland) A\u2019s, he was telling (him), \u2018You\u2019ve got to get me over to the Yankees, tell Cash\u2026I want out of Oakland, I want to win a world championship, blah, blah, blah.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s a hell of a pitcher, so we made a trade and acquired him,\u2019\u2019 Cashman said of sending three prospects to Oakland for Gray.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said he was excited\u2019\u2019 to be a Yankee, Cashman said. And when things didn\u2019t work out, \u201che never said anything other than he was struggling and we tried to support him every step of the way.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The Cashman-Gray saga is just another reason to circle June 5-7, and Aug. 28-30 on the pinstriped calendar, when the Red Sox visit Yankee Stadium in 2026.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman’s frank response to Sonny Gray’s anti-pinstripe rant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Responding to Sonny Gray\u2019s recent anti-Yankee comments, GM Brian Cashman described the former pinstriped pitcher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[169791,8731,146352,15056,363,22178,28624,148589,99,7645,6533,12404],"class_list":["post-336626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-anti-yankee","tag-boston","tag-brian-cashman","tag-cincinnati","tag-mlb","tag-oakland","tag-red-sox","tag-sonny-gray","tag-sports","tag-st-louis","tag-trade-deadline","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}