Sonny Gray lied about wanting to play for New York

Boston Red Sox

“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. ‘This is the worst place.’ He just sits in his hotel room.”

New Red Sox pitcher Sonny Gray didn’t mince words last week when asked about joining Boston after previously spending parts of two seasons playing for the Yankees. 

“I’ll tell you what did factor into my decision to come to Boston,” Gray said in his first meeting with the Boston media. “It feels good to me to go to a place now where, you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees. … “New York just wasn’t a good situation for me. It wasn’t a great setup for me and my family. I never wanted to go there in the first place.”

It should come as little surprise that the Red Sox and Yankees are trading barbs, even in the middle of the offseason. 

But, longtime Yankees GM Brian Cashman had a bone to pick with Gray’s comments about never wanting to play for the Yankees during his years pitching for the A’s.

Speaking to The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty and other reporters at MLB’s Winter Meetings in Orlando, Cashman said that Gray — then pitching for Oakland — made it abundantly clear to several individuals that he wanted to play for the Yankees. 

“When he was with the A’s, he was telling our minor-league video coordinator, ‘You got to get me over to the Yankees,’” Cashman said. “‘Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. I want out of Oakland. I want a championship.’”

But things went south after New York eventually traded for Gray in July 2017.  Despite earning three All-Star nods across his 13-year MLB career, Gray had a rough stretch during his two seasons in The Bronx — going 15-16 with a 4.51 ERA over that stretch.

During his lone full season with the Yankees in 2018, Gray posted an ERA of 4.90 and was eventually bumped out of the starting rotation in August.

Cashman told reporters that as Gray continued to struggle in The Bronx, the then-Yankees starter told him in 2018 that he never wanted to pitch for New York in the first place. 

“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.”

According to Cashman, Gray’s initial desire to join New York was more of a ruse orchestrated by Gray’s agent, Bo McKinnis. 

“‘(McKinnis) told me to do that,’” Cashman said Gray told him.  “‘(He) told me to lie.’”

“‘I wish you would have told me well beforehand,’” Cashman recalled saying to Gray while retelling the interaction to reporters. “‘I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here.’ We tried to do our homework.”

Despite Gray’s miserable stint in New York, the righty has rebounded since the Yankees traded him ahead of the 2019 season. 

Gray finished seventh in NL Cy Young voting in 2019 with the Reds — sporting a 11-8 record and a 2.87 ERA. He went on to finish second in AL Cy Young voting with the Twins (8-8, 2.79 ERA) in 2023.

 

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.