Oakland Athletics: This is the summer to trade Sonny Gray

Last night Sonny Gray got the start for the Oakland Athletics and went eight innings, gave up two hits, one run, and earned the loss. While the A’s continue their rebuild on the fly, it’s time to move Gray to help that process along.

“He was unconscious tonight.” That’s what Sonny Gray’s catcher, Bruce Maxwell, had to say about Gray’s performance on Friday night. Obviously somebody didn’t go to the Miguel Montero school of post-game interviews. Obviously a catcher is supposed to say something like this about his teammate, especially when that teammate is the best pitcher on the staff. But it was also true. A mix of ground balls, liners and a few strikeouts helped Sonny Gray to dominate the Atlanta bats.

In June, Gray started six games for the Oakland Athletics after coming off of the disabled list, and four of those six were quality starts, giving him an ERA of 3.52 for the month. He had one bad outing, June 20 in Houston, and that was really just a rough first inning where he gave up five earned before mowing the ‘Stros down for the final four innings of his outing.

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Over at MLB Trade Rumors yesterday, they went about making a case for a number of teams to be interested in Sonny Gray at the trade deadline. The number of teams that they came up with was eleven, more than one-third of the league. With that in mind, it’s becoming clear that this is the summer that Oakland has to trade away Sonny Gray.

The same headlines will be posted: “Another one gets away from A’s” or “Oakland can’t have nice things” but in reality, this makes sense for them this time around. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome speaking from being an A’s fan for so long, but he’s a valuable commodity and with so many teams looking for a front-line type starter, the A’s will be getting plenty of calls.

With his improved performance this year over last, that means that the A’s can ask for a bit more than they could have gotten over the offseason, and with so many teams potentially in the mix to land his services, the A’s front office can play them against each other in a bidding war.

The other aspect working in Oakland’s favor here is that Gray won’t be a free agent until after the 2019 season, meaning that even rebuilding teams like the Braves and Brewers could be added to the usual mix of suspects that includes Houston, Los Angeles, etc. Add to this that if teams aren’t willing to meet the A’s demands that they can just hold onto him until this winter, or next deadline, and all of the cards are on Oakland’s side here.

Next: Red Sox third base targets on the trade market

The A’s have been bringing up a slew of their top prospects of late and seeing what they can do at the big-league level. This has to be by design. Sure, injuries have accounted for some of the moves, but seeing a lineup with rookie Matt Olson, rookie Franklin Barreto, rookie Jaycob Brugman, rookie Bruce Maxwell and second year player Ryon Healy last night was to give the coaching staff and the front office an idea of where they may need to look for more depth, if not a flat-out upgrade in a potential Gray deal. Add two more rookies in Chad Pinder and Matt Chapman, currently on the disabled list, and the A’s have plenty of young talent. Evaluating them against MLB competition just feels like a way to suss out which areas will ultimately need improving in the next couple of years.

I would actually be shocked if Sonny Gray is still in green and gold for much longer.

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