ORLANDO, Fla. – Responding to Sonny Gray’s recent anti-Yankee comments, GM Brian Cashman described the former pinstriped pitcher as disingenuous.
And the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has a new villain in the Bronx.
Upon his trade two weeks ago from St. Louis to Boston, Gray said “it feels good to me to go to a place now where…it’s easy to hate the Yankees.’’
During his rocky year-and-a-half with the Yanks, “I just didn’t feel like I was allowed to go out there and be Sonny,’’ Gray said at his introductory Red Sox press conference.
Cashman countered by saying Gray’s personal misery in the Bronx was never expressed until hours after the 2018 trade deadline had passed, when it was too late.
According to Cashman, the right-hander assumed he’d be traded by the Yanks. When he wasn’t, Gray requested a private meeting with the GM.
“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York, this is the worst place, he sits in his hotel room – he told me all this stuff,’’ Cashman said Sunday at MLB’s Winter Meetings.
“I wish he told me beforehand,’’ said Cashman, adding that he wished he knew Gray’s stance “before we even tried to acquire’’ the coveted starter from Oakland at the 2017 trade deadline.
After the 2018 season, Cashman eventually sent Gray to Cincinnati for minor league infielder Shed Long Jr. and a competitive balance draft pick.
A three-time All-Star with a career 3.58 ERA, Gray, 36, posted a 15-16 mark and 4.51 ERA in 41 games (34 starts) as a Yankee.
According to Cashman, Gray feigned interest in the Yankees to increase his market.
“My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie,’’ Cashman said Gray told him, since “it wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s places I don’t want to go.’’
That lie, per Cashman, was being communicated by Gray to “a number of different people’’ and led to the Yankees feeling they’d accurately read Gray’s intent.
“His college roommate at Vanderbilt was our minor league video coordinator. So, when he was with the (Oakland) A’s, he was telling (him), ‘You’ve got to get me over to the Yankees, tell Cash…I want out of Oakland, I want to win a world championship, blah, blah, blah.’
“He’s a hell of a pitcher, so we made a trade and acquired him,’’ Cashman said of sending three prospects to Oakland for Gray.
“He said he was excited’’ to be a Yankee, Cashman said. And when things didn’t work out, “he never said anything other than he was struggling and we tried to support him every step of the way.’’
The Cashman-Gray saga is just another reason to circle June 5-7, and Aug. 28-30 on the pinstriped calendar, when the Red Sox visit Yankee Stadium in 2026.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Yankees' GM Brian Cashman's frank response to Sonny Gray's anti-pinstripe rant