Around Baseball 2025

[jaysblue]

16 hours ago, Laika said:

Sonny Gray lied about wanting to play for Yankees before 2017 trade, Brian Cashman says

 

ORLANDO, Fla. — It all started with a little Gray lie?

Sonny Gray made waves last week after he was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Boston Red Sox, saying that he “never” wanted to play for the New York Yankees in the first place and that he was excited to join Boston, “where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.”

But Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Gray lied behind the scenes about wanting to play for the team before the club acquired him in 2017 in what wound up as a failed marriage.

Speaking to reporters at the Winter Meetings on Sunday night, Cashman said Gray — then pitching for the Oakland Athletics — was telling people at the time that he wanted to play for the Yankees and that Gray later admitted he was fibbing the whole time.

“When he was with the A’s, he was telling our minor-league video coordinator, ‘You got to get me over to the Yankees,’” Cashman said. “‘Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. I want out of Oakland. I want a championship.’”

Cashman said Gray was “communicating that to a number of different people … that he wants to be a Yankee.”

But in his second season in the Bronx, after Gray told Cashman he was surprised the Yankees didn’t trade him at the 2018 deadline, he came clean to the general manager.

“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.”

Cashman said when he reminded Gray he had told people he wanted to be traded to the Yankees, Gray laid the blame on his agent, Bo McKinnis.

“(McKinnis) told me to do that,” Gray said, according to Cashman.

Cashman said Gray told him McKinnis “told me to lie” because “it wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s certain places that I don’t want to go to.”

“In 2017, Sonny did not have no-trade rights with the Oakland Athletics, so he had no legal right to have input as to where he would be traded or if he would be traded,” McKinnis told The Athletic when reached for comment Sunday night. “As such, he made no statement that he did or did not want to be traded to any specific team, and thus, there was no statement that could have included a lie.

“The Athletics had no obligation to inform Sonny of any trade communications they had with other clubs, so they never told him they were potentially trading him to any particular team. As an aside, if a player does not want to play for a particular club — thus potentially not performing at their best if they were with that team — it does not help their career and future free agency to lie their way into a trade to that club.”

A short while later, McKinnis sent another message 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. 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.”

Cashman said he told Gray the Yankees might not have traded for him if they had known how much he didn’t want to play for them.

“‘I wish you would have told me well beforehand,’” Cashman recalled saying to 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.”

At his introductory news conference at Yankee Stadium in 2017, Gray appeared thrilled to join the team.

“I couldn’t be happier with how it all played out,” he said at the time, “and I couldn’t be happier to be here.”

Then Gray spent a miserable 538 days with the club, going 15-16 with a 4.51 ERA in 41 games (34 starts). He was frequently booed before the Yankees traded him to the Cincinnati Reds in January 2019.

When the Yankees acquired Gray for Dustin Fowler, James Kaprielian and Jorge Mateo, he had already been an All-Star with Oakland in 2015. He has since made All-Star teams as a member of the Reds and Minnesota Twins.

Gray immediately struggled when he joined the Yankees midseason in 2017, going 4-7 with a 3.72 ERA in 11 starts and never seeming to be on the same page with then-pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Then, in 2018, he went 8-7 with a 5.08 ERA in 20 starts before the trade deadline. Cashman said Gray thought the Yankees would trade him before the deadline. When it didn’t happen, the pair spoke in an office at Yankee Stadium.

That was when Gray revealed to Cashman that he never wanted to be a Yankee in the first place. Cashman replied that in the offseason, he’d do his best to trade him.

“I told him, ‘Nothing I can do about it now,’” Cashman said.

— Ken Rosenthal contributed to this report.

Must have been a slow day at the Winter Meetings yesterday lol. 

[jaysblue]

19 hours ago, L54 said:

 

Nice pickup for $7.5M on a one-year deal. Could start or pitch out of the pen as a multiple inning reliever. 

9.54 K/9 and 1.1 WAR last season. 

 

[Brownie19]

2 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Nice pickup for $7.5M on a one-year deal. Could start or pitch out of the pen as a multiple inning reliever. 

9.54 K/9 and 1.1 WAR last season. 

 

A lot of us were keen on him last offseason.  Great to see him stay relatively healthy the past 2 years.  If he can find a way to suppress the HR/9, he likely still has some upside.  Nice little signing for the DBacks.

[Eat My Shatkins]

Some LA sports media guy (David Pingalore) claiming the Dodgers are potentially in talks with the Tigers about a mega trade involving Skubal. Sounds like horseshit to me, but could you imagine lol

Skubal

Yamamoto 

Snell

Ohtani

Glasnow

[L54]

Now the dominos can begin to fall 

Kyle Tucker come on down 

[G-Snarls]

Great deal for him 

[L54]

Cute that Pittsburgh made an offer 😂 

[Laika]

Thank you for price enforcing, Pittsburgh 

Edwin Diaz to LAD!

Everything is happening!!!!

[Orgfiller]

3 minutes ago, L54 said:

Now the dominos can begin to fall 

Kyle Tucker come on down 

My god that has a chance to be a god awful contract very quickly. Dombrowski strikes again. Just learned nothing from the Castellanos disaster.

[Laika]

I know he hits a lot of homers and just had an elite season but 5/$150 for Schwarber at his age is f***ing lunacy 

He barely projects to be worth that AAV in year one 

[Orgfiller]

6 minutes ago, Laika said:

Thank you for price enforcing, Pittsburgh 

Edwin Diaz to LAD!

Everything is happening!!!!

f*** the Dodgers lmao. Just flexing on the rest of the league every offseason. This is some evil empire Yankees ********.

[Eat My Shatkins]

f*** the Dodgers and f*** Edwin Diaz

 

I hope his arm falls off in spring training 

[Laika]

1 minute ago, Orgfiller said:

My god that has a chance to be a god awful contract very quickly. Dombrowski strikes again. Just learned nothing from the Castellanos disaster.

Organization also wasted how much money on Ryan Howard?

[Laika]

have to imagine it's a huge contract for Diaz to sign on Dec 9th 

[Terminator]

 

[Stangstag]

14 minutes ago, L54 said:

Now the dominos can begin to fall 

Kyle Tucker come on down 

Yikes 

[G-Snarls]

Seriously Dodgers FU

[G-Snarls]

4 minutes ago, Laika said:

have to imagine it's a huge contract for Diaz to sign on Dec 9th 

Only 3 years 

AAV must be NUTS

[Stangstag]

Just now, G-Snarls said:

Only 3 years 

AAV must be NUTS

3/100 watch lol

[Terminator]

There's gotta be some deferrals in that Schwarber deal but even so that contract is nuts.

30 mil a year for a DH entering his Age 33 season. By the end of the contract he will be lucky to be cracking the mendoza line.

[Orgfiller]

Dodgers splurge on Tanner Scott, he blows, and they "rectify" their mistake by just casually splurging on an even better reliever the next offseason for more money lol. Scott is probably back to being elite next year, as the setup man for Edwin f***ing Diaz. It's honestly hard to catch up to this.

[glory]

It's 3/69 for Diaz according to Passan. That's not bad as far as term is considered. Three years is nothing. Not sure why the Mets couldn't have beaten that, especially since that's their own FA. 

[Terminator]

That's a pretty good deal for the Dodgers.

But even so, I'm cool with them spending big on relievers. It blew up in their face last year and it's a good way to tie up some money to prevent them from getting Tucker, Bo, etc.

[Laika]

Just now, glory said:

It's 3/69 for Diaz according to Passan. That's not bad as far as term is considered. Three years is nothing. Not sure why the Mets couldn't have beaten that, especially since that's their own FA. 

this is weird

did Edwin Diaz just snap accept this because he "wants to win"? 

[Orgfiller]

Surprised nobody, especially the Mets, could beat that. That's a very good deal for the Dodgers, and what seems like a poor deal for Diaz's camp unless he literally had no interest from the rest of the league.

[glory]

Diaz is 3 years younger than Suarez with a better track record and got 3 years. Wonder what Suarez's market will look like now. 

Also Schwarber's deal takes the Phillies out of the Tucker sweepstakes most likely. The Yankees are counting pennies, and the Dodgers apparently only want in if the deal is shorter term/higher AAV. The Mets need an OF but Stearns while having unlimited financial resources wants to be the smartest guy in the room (Soto was a Cohen signing), so not sure he's going to give out a massive deal for Tucker. The Red Sox are trying to trade an OF. I'm not sure where Tucker's market other than the Jays is going to come from. 

[Eat My Shatkins]

Obviously Diaz picked the dodgers. Can't beat em join em. I doubt that was the best offer he received. 

[Terminator]

The lowly Pirates made the Phillies pony up but the sorry ass Mets couldn't be bothered to price enforce the Dodgers? Pathetic

Usually we are the price enforcers but we are going after the big fish

[The_DH]

Might as well sit back and enjoy: the chips are falling today.  Maybe we should do a bet on how much is spent on any one day.  My guess is $375 million today.

[Orgfiller]

6 minutes ago, glory said:

Diaz is 3 years younger than Suarez with a better track record and got 3 years. Wonder what Suarez's market will look like now. 

Also Schwarber's deal takes the Phillies out of the Tucker sweepstakes most likely. The Yankees are counting pennies, and the Dodgers apparently only want in if the deal is shorter term/higher AAV. The Mets need an OF but Stearns while having unlimited financial resources wants to be the smartest guy in the room (Soto was a Cohen signing), so not sure he's going to give out a massive deal for Tucker. The Red Sox are trying to trade an OF. I'm not sure where Tucker's market other than the Jays is going to come from. 

I wouldn't count the Dodgers and Yankees out on Tucker. Dodgers can always dump Teoscar's contract elsewhere, and Yankees need to at least replace Bellinger. Red Sox I could see being out since they have too many OF as is, and they're all cheap. Mets have unlimited money whenever they feel like using it, but I mostly agree he doesn't seem like their main priority target.