Oakland Athletics: Sonny Gray Set to Throw Bullpen Session in Texas
The Oakland Athletics ace Sonny Gray has had a rough time of late. Actually, it’s been about the past year or so.
Still, things may be looking up for the young right-hander as he is making the trip to Texas with the Oakland Athletics in order to throw a bullpen session, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea.
Sonny Gray, who was diagnosed with a lat strain during spring training, has been throwing off flat ground for about a week.
He is scheduled to throw a bullpen session while the A’s play a three-game series with the Texas Rangers.
This is good news for both Gray and the team, as it may mean he will come off of the disabled list sooner than expected.
Gray, who had been stellar for the Oakland Athletics since he was first called up in mid-July of 2013, hit a major roadblock in 2016.
A top-three finalist for the Cy Young Award in 2015, Gray went from being perfectly healthy and posting a 2.73 ERA to posting a 5.69 mark and spending two stints on the disabled list in 2016.
As recently as late January Gray admitted to not feeling 100 percent in the spring of 2016.
"“Even some other stuff in the spring, I had issues going on and then it just leads to another and leads to another. Before you can take a step back and actually get healthy, it’s gonna continue to make the situation worse,” Gray told NBC Sports’ Joe Stiglich in January."
Both fortunately and unfortunately, a similar situation led to Gray’s current stint on the disabled list to start the 2016 season.
Gray maintained that after the missing most of last season and having had a full offseason that he was feeling completely healthy.
He also vowed to let his coaches and manager know if anything was amiss, having learned from the previous spring what not saying something about a minor issue would eventually amount to.
He made his first spring start and things went quite well for the 27-year-old. His second start, however, did not go as smoothly.
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It was eerily reminiscent of last season. After his first stint on the disabled list with a strained trapezius in 2016, Gray came back and looked like himself making two strong starts, but in his third start things began to unravel.
Gray was diagnosed this time with a forearm strain and sent back to the DL. He pitched just a single inning in late September before the offseason began for Oakland.
This time, after his second spring start Gray was diagnosed with a lat strain that was going to keep him from even throwing the ball for three weeks.
It also meant that he would likely miss the entire first month of the season.
Luckily for the A’s who need their ace back, Gray being scheduled for a bullpen session means that he may be back from the disabled list sooner than expected.
It does seem questionable, bringing him back sooner rather than later. After having three separate injuries within a year, it would seem that the team should bring him back a little more slowly.
Still, they should know more after this weekend in Arlington.
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