ORLANDO — With Sonny Gray choosing to shine a spotlight on his time with the Yankees, Brian Cashman said the tumultuous tenure followed a “lie” that the pitcher told.
Just last week, Gray said that he “never” wanted to play for the Yankees as the Red Sox introduced him following a trade with the Cardinals. He added that he was excited to play in Boston, a city “where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.”
“New York, it just wasn’t a good situation for me,” Gray added. “It wasn’t a great setup for me and my family. I never wanted to go there in the first place.”
However, Cashman, speaking at the Winter Meetings on Sunday, said that Gray expressed a desire to play for the Yankees before they acquired him from the Athletics in 2017. According to Cashman, that ill-fated move came after Gray told his college roommate at Vanderbilt — the Bombers’ minor league video coordinator at the time — “You gotta get me over to the Yankees. Tell Cash, ‘Get me over to the Yankees.’ I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship.”
“It wasn’t just him,” Cashman said, referring to the video coordinator. “[Gray] was communicating that to a number of different people. That was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee. He is a hell of a pitcher, so we made a trade, acquired him. He said he was excited.”
Gray pitched poorly for the Yankees, recording a 4.51 ERA over 41 games from 2017-2018 and never quite clicking with pitching coach Larry Rothschild. He was especially bad in 2018, posting a 4.90 ERA and receiving a demotion to the bullpen, as well as countless boos.
That season, following the trade deadline, Cashman said that Gray requested a meeting with him. During that sit-down, Cashman said Gray told him, “I thought you were going to trade me.” However, Cashman was in need of pitching at the time, he explained.
“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here,” Cashman continued. “He hates New York. ‘This is the worst place.’ He just sits in his hotel room. He told me all this stuff.”
Cashman told Gray that “it’s a little late now” for a trade, as the deadline had passed, and he reminded him that he privately expressed a desire to be a Yankee behind the scenes before the trade. Cashman claims that Gray then said his agent, Bo McKinnis, “told me to lie” because “it wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s certain places I don’t want to go to.”
McKinnis did not immediately return a request for comment, but he did tell The Athletic that Cashman’s account “makes zero sense.”
Cashman said that he told Gray the Yankees may have avoided trading for him had they known the Tennessee native didn’t want to be in New York. The general manager then said he would “do whatever I can to move you” that offseason.
Cashman did exactly that, trading Gray to the Reds in January 2019. Gray immediately returned to the All-Star form he displayed in Oakland, and he went on to have success with the Twins and Cardinals as well.
Now he is back in the American League East as a member of the Red Sox and talking openly about how he never wanted to be on the other side of baseball’s most storied rivalry.
It’s a change in tune from the message Gray shared at his introductory Yankees press conference years ago.
“I couldn’t be happier with how it all played out,” the pitcher said at the time, “and I couldn’t be happier to be here today.”
