ORLANDO, Fla. -- As the Yankees busied themselves at the 2018 Trade Deadline, lining up a trio of veteran arms to bolster a playoff push, Sonny Gray looked around the clubhouse and wondered aloud why he was still there.
That’s according to general manager Brian Cashman, who revealed the previously unreported conversation Sunday at the Winter Meetings in response to Gray’s recent comments upon joining the Red Sox, in which the right-hander said of New York: “I never wanted to go there in the first place.”
It’s true, Cashman says, but with a caveat -- Gray had said the exact opposite while he was with the Athletics.
After the 2018 Deadline passed, Cashman said Gray asked him for a private chat. That took place in the Yankee Stadium office of Chad Bohling, the team’s senior director of organizational performance.
“He said, ‘Hey, can we talk?’” Cashman said. “We closed the door and he said, ‘I thought you were going to trade me.' Publicly, I was trying to get pitching and bullpen [help]. Why would I trade a starter when we needed pitching badly?
“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here -- he hates New York, [that] this is the worst place [and] he just sits in his hotel room. He told me all this stuff and I said: ‘Well, it’s a little late now.’”
The Yankees acquired Gray from the Athletics in July 2017 in part because they believed he was actively seeking an opportunity in New York.
“When he was with the A’s,” Cashman recalled, “he was telling our Minor League video coordinator, ‘You’ve got to 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.’ He was communicating that to a number of different people, and it was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee.”
It was not a good fit. Gray went 15-16 with a 4.81 ERA in 41 games (34 starts) with the Yankees, including a removal from the rotation in August 2018, shortly after Cashman added pitchers Zack Britton, J.A. Happ and Lance Lynn at the Deadline.
During the closed-door conversation, Cashman said he confronted Gray about the discrepancy: “But you said you wanted to be traded here.”
According to Cashman, Gray’s response was: “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.”
“Nothing I can do about it now,” Cashman said he told Gray. “I wish you’d told me beforehand. I wish we knew this before we ever tried to acquire you.”
Gray remained with the Yankees through the 2018 season before being traded to the Reds in January 2019.
McKinnis challenged Cashman’s version of events in a series of text messages sent to The Athletic on Sunday.
“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 said. “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 -- 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.”
McKinnis later continued: “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.”
The saga resurfaced earlier this month after Gray -- following his trade from the Cardinals to Boston -- said he was happy to join a franchise where “it’s easy to hate the Yankees,” adding that New York “wasn’t a great setup for me and my family.”
“I just wasn’t myself,” said Gray, a three-time All-Star who has pitched for the A’s, Yankees, Reds, Twins and Cardinals. “I just didn’t feel like I was allowed to go out there and be Sonny.”
Fans on both sides of the rivalry should have plenty to say about it next year. The Yankees’ first series against the Red Sox is April 21-23 at Fenway Park. Boston visits Yankee Stadium for the first time June 5-7.
Bryan Hoch
@BryanHoch