{"id":434528,"date":"2025-12-09T01:40:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T01:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/434528\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T01:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T01:40:26","slug":"sonny-gray-lied-about-wanting-to-play-for-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/434528\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonny Gray lied about wanting to play for New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston Red Sox\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThat\u2019s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. \u2018This is the worst place.\u2019 He just sits in his hotel room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"New
\n\tBrian Cashman had a bone to pick with Sonny Gray’s recent comments. (AP Photo\/Ronald Blum)\t<\/p>\n

New Red Sox pitcher Sonny Gray didn\u2019t mince words last week when asked about joining Boston after previously spending parts of two seasons playing for the Yankees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what did factor into my decision to come to Boston,\u201d Gray said in his first meeting with the Boston media.<\/a> \u201cIt feels good to me to go to a place now where, you know what, it\u2019s easy to hate the Yankees. \u2026 \u201cNew York just wasn\u2019t a good situation for me. It wasn\u2019t a great setup for me and my family. I never wanted to go there in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should come as little surprise that the Red Sox and Yankees are trading barbs, even in the middle of the offseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, longtime Yankees GM Brian Cashman had a bone to pick with Gray\u2019s comments about never wanting to play for the Yankees during his years pitching for the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Athletic\u2019s Brendan Kuty <\/a>and other reporters at MLB\u2019s Winter Meetings in Orlando, Cashman said that Gray \u2014 then pitching for Oakland \u2014 made it abundantly clear to several individuals that he wanted to play for the Yankees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he was with the A\u2019s, he was telling our minor-league video coordinator, \u2018You got to get me over to the Yankees,\u2019\u201d Cashman said. \u201c\u2018Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. I want out of Oakland. I want a championship.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But things went south after New York eventually traded for Gray in July 2017.\u00a0 Despite earning three All-Star nods across his 13-year MLB career, Gray had a rough stretch during his two seasons in The Bronx \u2014 going 15-16 with a 4.51 ERA over that stretch.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when he told me he never wanted to be here,\u201d Cashman said. \u201cHe hates New York. \u2018This is the worst place.\u2019 He just sits in his hotel room.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Cashman, Gray\u2019s initial desire to join New York was more of a ruse orchestrated by Gray\u2019s agent, Bo McKinnis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018(McKinnis) told me to do that,\u2019\u201d Cashman said Gray told him.\u00a0 \u201c\u2018(He) told me to lie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I wish you would have told me well beforehand,\u2019\u201d Cashman recalled saying to Gray while retelling the interaction to reporters. \u201c\u2018I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here.\u2019 We tried to do our homework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Gray\u2019s miserable stint in New York, the righty has rebounded since the Yankees traded him ahead of the 2019 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gray finished seventh in NL Cy Young voting in 2019 with the Reds \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"Profile\t<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the Today newsletter<\/p>\n

Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boston Red Sox \u201cThat\u2019s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":434529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-434528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115687065382388331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}