Sonny Gray Would Be a Huge Addition

You can feel good, good about Gray

We’ve all heard the story. Right-hander Sonny Gray can’t pitch in New York. I call hogwash.

Gray, 31, made his bones in Oakland, pitching to a 2.88 ERA (3.36 FIP) with 419 strikeouts, 153 walks, and 0.66 home runs allowed per nine innings — good for 18th in baseball — from 2013 through 2015.

His breakout performances in the 2013 ALDS versus Detroit (2.08 ERA, 12 strikeouts over two starts) and the subsequent wave that followed carried him to his first American League All-Star appearance in 2015.

Nagging injuries ravaged his 2016 season (5.69 ERA over 22 starts), but the Vanderbilt alum got back to work in 2017, putting up a solid 3.43 ERA over his first 16 starts of the year and continuing his uncanny aversion to dingers (0.74 per nine).

As things tend to go in Oakland, right around the trade deadline of that season, the New York Yankees came calling, plucking Gray from the Bay for a trio of then-high-end prospects (Dustin Fowler, Jorge Mateo, and James Kaprielian).

The right-hander finished out the regular season in an unspectacular but effective fashion, owning a 3.72 ERA over 11 starts down the stretch in The Bronx, albeit with a noticeable but uncharacteristic 11 homers allowed in 65.1 innings.

Three earned runs over 3.1 innings versus Cleveland in the ALDS certainly didn’t earn the trust of Yankees fans or team brass as Gray’s turn was skipped over until Game 4 of the ALCS.

His impressive (even more so now that we know what was going on in Houston) five innings of one-hit, two-run (one earned) ball versus the Astros were overshadowed by the Yanks losing the game and eventually the series and, just like that, a narrative was born.

When things went awry in 2018 and Gray approached the team’s coaching staff regarding his increased walk and home run rates (3.94 BB/9 and 0.97 HR/9 in 2018), his questions were returned with lip service.

“What do you think?”, Gray asked his coaches regarding his stark home and away splits that season, per Eno Sarris of The Athletic (an excellent read). “Am I nuts? Do you see a difference? What’s the difference? They said no, you’ve just been unlucky. I was like, ‘that’s bullshit’’.

It’s easy to point at Gray’s struggles in The Bronx and cast him as not being a “New York guy”, but that would be lazy. There was a method to the Yankees’ (literal) madness.

Gray’s spin rates have historically been outstanding (93rd percentile on his curve last season, 88th on his fastball). The Yanks inexplicably had him lean on a pitch he wasn’t used to leaning on, and it hurt his effectiveness.

“They love sliders,” Gray told The Athletic. “The numbers say the slider is a good pitch, but you might not realize how many shitty counts you’re getting in while throwing all those sliders. They wanted me to be [Masahiro Tanaka] and I’m way different from him.”

“I can’t command my slider that well. I want to throw my slider in the dirt with two strikes, and that’s about it,” he said. “When I try to throw sliders for a strike, I get around it and it’s just a shitty spinning pitch.”

There’s a whole lot to be said for having such a well-honed knowledge of one’s craft. And there’s a whole lot more that goes into that process than we think.

Advanced data can do wonders for a ballplayer on either side of the chalk. Bits of information, when delivered to and applied correctly, have the ability to take a player out of the doldrums and back to prominence.

Just check out what Matt Harvey is doing these days (great read from Jack Hendon here at The Apple). Three days of adjustments already have his fastball acting the same way it was during his heyday. Though, maybe a little short on giddy-up.

Gray’s dropoff in New York led him to reconnect with his former pitching coach at Vanderbilt University, Derek Johnson, to regain his form — and his edge — that offseason, and advanced metrics would have everything to do with his resurgence.

It just so happened the Cincinnati Reds had hired Johnson as their new pitching coach that Halloween. The seeds had been sewn. In January, Gray was traded to the Reds for outfielder Shed Long and a compensation pick, and off he went. Literally.

Since landing in Cincinnati, Gray has been one of the more dominant starting pitchers in MLB.

Over 42 starts since 2019, Gray’s 3.07 ERA ranks seventh in the majors, his 3.33 FIP ranks eighth, and his 0.82 home runs per nine are good for second-best in baseball — better than Jacob deGrom’s 0.86 HR/9 over that span, in fact.

Narratives aside (as they should be), adding Gray in a potential trade with the Reds would undoubtedly be costly ($22.2 million owed through 2022 with a $12 million option for 2023) but could pay the sort of dividends that take an almost-there team over the edge.

In a division and league populated with some incredibly dangerous offenses, another top-flight starter could never hurt.