Sonny Gray to Start Elimination Game Against Yankees, Reflects on Rocky Bronx Tenure

Sonny Gray will take the mound Wednesday for the Boston Red Sox in a must-win wild-card game against the New York Yankees, the team he spent a difficult year and a half with nearly a decade ago.

Boston lost the series opener 9-0 on Tuesday, putting the Red Sox on the brink of elimination and handing Gray one of the biggest starts of his career. The 36-year-old pitcher waived his no-trade clause last winter to join the Red Sox, telling reporters in December, “It feels good to me to go to a place now where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.”

Gray was traded from the then-Oakland A’s to the Yankees at the 2017 trade deadline, a move that has since drawn scrutiny. Gray has said he “never” wanted to be a Yankee, while former Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has said Gray sent backchannel messages, through the team’s minor league video coordinator, indicating he wanted to be in New York and competing for a title.

Whatever the case, Gray struggled in the Bronx. He posted a 4.51 ERA over a season and a half and drew criticism from both fans and opponents at Yankee Stadium. He told Cashman only after the 2018 trade deadline that he was surprised he hadn’t been dealt and that he had never wanted to play for New York. Cashman traded him to the Cincinnati Reds after that season.

Speaking before Wednesday’s start, Gray reflected at length on why his time in New York went so poorly.

“I came from Oakland, and Oakland to here. I think that maybe during my time [in New York] there was a lot of outside this, outside that, unfamiliarity with me and my situation and my family,” Gray said. “It’s kind of like one of those things that you have a snowball or whatever, right? And there’s a snowball that kind of starts rolling down a hill. If you don’t ever stop it, then the snowball just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it picks up traction and it just gets more snow. And it just continues to go down this thing. And then the bigger the snowball gets, the harder it is to stop it or take a step back.”

One of the lowest points came on June 30, 2018, when Gray was booed off the mound after allowing seven runs in just 2 1/3 innings against these same Red Sox. He was out of the Yankees’ rotation by that August.

Since leaving New York, Gray has pitched well for four other organizations. He said the difficult stretch ultimately shaped him for the better.

“It just took me to get away and get myself into a different environment and then reflect on those things, right — reflect on what was good, what was bad, what didn’t work. And that took some time,” Gray said. “But I do know that playing here made me a stronger person, made me a better man, a better husband. Ultimately, it made me a better pitcher, a better baseball player. And that’s kind of what I take from my time here.”

Now, with Boston’s season on the line, Gray is set to face the fanbase that once booed him out of town.

“I think it will be a playoff energy on the road, playoff atmosphere on the road,” Gray said. “As far as reception, this or that, it will be what it will be. I’m not going to sit here and try to control something that I can’t control because I ultimately have no control over that. It will be what it will be, and I’ll just do my part to be ready to go out there and compete and to pitch and to go win a game.”