After trading three young players for him last summer, the New York Yankees have already soured enough on Sonny Gray to sell him at a low-value point.
New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman held his traditional end-of-season press conference today ahead of the beginning of the American League Championship Series. While he was guarded in most things around the team’s direction over the offseason, one thing he was quite clear about was that the team intended to move on from Sonny Gray.
Gray was acquired as part of a deadline deal in July of 2017 that brought back international money as well to the Yankees for three highly-regarded young players in James Kaprielian, Jorge Mateo, and Dustin Fowler. At the time of the deal, Gray had a 3.43 ERA with Oakland in 97 innings with a 30/94 BB/K ratio.
The 2017 season closed out fine for Gray, albeit certainly not what the Yankees were hoping for, as he posted a 3.72 ERA and 1.26 WHIP over 65 1/3 regular season innings, with a 27/59 BB/K. He saw his home run rate go up significantly in the smaller Yankee Stadium, though, allowing 11 home runs with the Yankees compared to 8 in 32 more innings in Oakland.
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Gray made two starts in the postseason with mixed results. He could not find the strike zone against the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS, walking 4 over 3 1/3 innings, finishing with 3 runs allowed on 3 hits, striking out 2 and even hitting a batter. He followed that up, however, with a very good start against the Houston Astros in the ALCS, where he allowed just one hit and two walks over 5 innings, as the Astros pushed across two runs (one earned), and he struck out 4. Ironically, the Yankees won his playoff start against the Indians but lost his start against the Astros.
With some of the luster already off of his shine, Gray was part of the opening day rotation for the Yankees this season, but he had struggles from the start, with his typically difficult stuff to square up suddenly quite hittable, as hitters posted a .267 average against him where he normally sat in the .215-.225 range.
Gray’s hard-hit rate spiked from 28% in 2017 to 35.5% in 2018 even as he implemented a cutter heavily into his repertoire. His once-effective changeup began to be hit very hard on the year.
Though he did pitch much better in the second half (5.46 ERA versus 3.63 ERA), much of that could be attributed to a shift to the bullpen and out of the rotation that happened and allowed his stuff to play up, as he posted a 5.26 ERA as a starter on the season and a 2.60 ERA as a reliever.
Whether the Yankees will be able to find much in return for Gray remains to be seen. He’s in his final arbitration season before becoming a free agent after 2019, and though his salary should not be terribly high in arbitration, MLB Trade Rumors recently put out their projections, and they had him at $9.1 million, which is not exactly cheap either. This could be an interesting deal to watch unfold!