It’s quite possible Sonny Gray spends just one season in the Boston Red Sox rotation. He’s apparently set on making the most of it – and that includes taking shots at their archrivals.
Gray expressed his disdain for the New York Yankees in an introductory video news conference with the Boston media Dec. 2, telling the virtually assembled throng: ‘It feels good to me to go to a place where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.’
That will certainly perk up some ears in the Bronx, where Gray spent half of the 2017 and all the 2018 season after a trade from the Oakland Athletics to the Yankees.
He posted a 4.51 ERA over 56 games – nearly a full run worse than his career 3.58 mark – and lost his rotation spot in 2018, feeding the trope that certain players struggle in the game’s biggest market.
Gray noted that he ‘never wanted to go in the first place’ to New York after dominating in Oakland’s pitcher-friendly park.
Gray regained his footing in 2019 after a trade to Cincinnati, earning his second of three All-Star nods, and flourished in Minnesota and St. Louis, where he signed a three-year, $75 million deal.
The retooling Cardinals dealt him and $20 million in cash to Boston, helping cover his $35 million salary this season; there’s a $31 million mutual option for 2027.
That decision will come after what should be a 2026 campaign that spices up the doddering Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. The teams met in the AL wild card series in October and the Yankees prevailed in a decisive Game 3 behind Walpole, Mass. flamethrower Cam Schlittler, who left no doubt he had no love for fans in his native New England.
They’d apparently talked a little too much smack before the winner-take-all game – and Schlittler responded with 12 strikeouts over eight innings and a verbal volley from a champagne-soaked clubhouse.
‘We’re aggressive back home and we’re going to try to get under people’s skins,’ he said. ‘They just picked the wrong guy to do it to. And the wrong team to do it to.’
Add Gray, a thoughtful Tennessean, to the mix. He donned a retro Red Sox World Series cap for his Zoom and noted his affection for the Red Sox goes back to playing for Tim Corbin, a fan of the club, at Vanderbilt.
Now, he’ll get his first taste of arguably the game’s finest rivalry, perhaps in the teams’ first series at Fenway Park, April 21-23. They don’t hit Yankee Stadium until June 5, which seems a long ways away as snow piles up around the country.
Yankee fans probably won’t forget.