Oakland Athletics: Sonny Gray making adjustments after rough start

Oakland Athletics ace, Sonny Gray, has been one of the more consistent pitchers in the MLB, but a poor start to 2016 has the right-hander making changes on the mound.

When the Athletics drafted Sonny Gray 18th overall in the 2011 Amateur Draft, the team knew that he had a chance of moving quickly through the system and contributing to the major league club in a shorter time than usual college starting pitchers because of his excellent control and advance feel for pitching.

That turned out to be just the case. Gray made his major league debut in 2013 and never looked back. In his first three years in the MLB, the 26 year-old finished each season with an average ERA of a 2.83. He also performed well in the postseason in the early parts of his career. In his first postseason game, he pitched 8 innings of no-run ball in route to a 1-0 win over the Tigers, which shows the type of maturity and poise the young pitcher has.

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With all of this consistent success, it makes Gray’s early season struggles very confusing. Right now, the right-hander has a 5.84 earned run average and is allowing exactly four walks per every nine innings. This is greatly up from his career 2.9 walk rate. In his last start versus the offensively challenged Tamps Bay Rays, he gave up two home runs to outfielder Brandon Guyer and gave up five runs in the first four innings of the ballgame. However, Gray started to settle in and made it to the six inning without giving up another run. While, this may seem like a fairly small accomplishment for a starter as successful as Gray, the Athletics ace was happy about the adjustments he made mid-start.

"“I can walk away from here with my head held high and really walk away confident and ready to go,” Gray said. “I’ve constantly been leaving the ball up, and you can tell. It was literally just a visual thing to get the ball back down, and you could tell there, when it’s back down, it’s got great life on it, and you start to see the swing and misses.”"

A’s catcher Stephen Vogt also said hat he could see some strides in the way that Gray threw the ball after he let up the couple home runs.

"y”He got his movement down in the zone back,” Vogt said, “and I think for him he felt it and was excited when he came out of the game.”"

(Quotes from the official Oakland Athletics website)

Hopefully these adjustments can help put Gray’s season back on track and he can give the Athletics a little jolt as we get into the middle of the summer. If at the very least, he may make for good trade bait if the young ace gets back on track.

Sonny Gray has been so good over the course of his career that his early seasons woes are probably just a blip in what should be another good season. But he needs to get back to keeping the ball down in the zone by continuing to keep trying to fix mechanics again. A couple of solid starts from Gray could have a profound impact on the Athletics season, whether it be getting them back in contention or getting a better return for him in July.

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What do you think of Gray’s early season struggles? Let us know in the comments below.

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