Sonny Gray’s “lies” landed him in New York.
That’s what Yankees GM Brian Cashman claimed on Sunday after the veteran pitcher said at his Red Sox introductory press conference last week that he “never wanted to go to” the Yankees and that “It feels good to me to go to a place where it’s easy to hate” them.
Cashman told reporters from the Winter Meetings in Orlando that Gray privately told people in 2017 — including the Yankees’ minor-league video coordinator, who was his college roommate at Vanderbilt — that he wanted to go to the Yankees.
“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.’” Cashman said.
The Yankees did acquire him from the A’s at the 2017 deadline, and he had a rough year in The Bronx — particularly struggling in home starts — when Cashman said that Gray told him he was surprised that the Yankees did not trade him at the 2018 deadline.
“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here,” Cashman said. “He hates New York. This is the worst place. He just sits in his hotel room. … I said, ‘Well, it’s a little late now.’ So then I said, ‘But you said you wanted to be traded here.’
“He said, ‘My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie. It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s certain places I don’t want to go to, so just go out and make sure you say …’ “So he told me after being with us for a very long time.”
McKinnis strongly denied Cashman’s version of events in comments to The Athletic.
“So, Brian is trying to make people believe I told Sonny to, in Cashman’s words, ‘lie’ to the minor-league video guy to try to get Sonny to the Yankees — even though, per Cashman, Sonny did not want to be with the Yankees — to subsequently somehow help Sonny’s free agency,” McKinnis texted the outlet.
“This makes zero sense. … Further, the words, ‘I want out of Oakland,’ have never been said by Sonny. He loved his time with the A’s.”
Yankees fans on social media were quick to find video of Gray’s introductory Yankees press conference, where he said he “couldn’t be happier” to join the perennial contender.
“’I wish you would have told me well beforehand,’” Cashman said of his 2018 conversation with Gray. “‘I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here.’ We tried to do our homework…. I told him, ‘Nothing I can do about it now.’”
The Yankees traded Gray to the Reds after the 2018 season — and he has had a solid career before and after his time with the storied franchise.
Now, the 36-year-old will find himself back in the middle of the rivalry after Boston traded for him this offseason.
