Sonny Gray’s disastrous 2018 season will long be etched in our minds. A much-ballyhooed trade acquisition midseason in 2017, Gray was banished from the starting rotation within a calendar year. Now, Brian Cashman is talking about dealing Gray to a better situation in a remarkably open fashion. The descent for Gray has been both swift and public.
The most commonly given reasons for Gray’s struggles as a Yankee have been twofold: Gray can’t cut it in New York, and the Yankees ruined Gray by imposing their pitching philosophy on him. I won’t delve into the efficacy of the first narrative, but I do think it is worth pushing back on the idea that the Yankees’ pitching strategy is what caused Gray to regress in 2018.