Sometimes, players just make stupid comments. For Sonny Gray, who was recently traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Boston Red Sox, that was the case when the latest quotes came out about him speaking about his time with the New York Yankees with The Boston Globe. When speaking, Gray stated that it feels good to go to a place now where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.
“It feels good to me to go to a place now where you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees, right?” Gray said, via Tim Healy of The Boston Globe. “It’s easy to go out and have that rivalry and go in it with full force, full steam ahead. I like the challenge, I appreciate the challenge, I accept the challenge. But this time around, it’s just go out and be yourself.”
I understand that Gray is trying to rile up his new fan base and wants to be loved by a Boston fan base that’s searching for success and has a real opportunity to accomplish whatever it wants because the Red Sox really can be one of the best teams in baseball.
Still, we also have to look back at what some of Gray did during his time with the Yankees.
It’s easy to go out and say that you hate the Yankees because I understand that a lot of fans also didn’t like him, but did he forget that he posted a 4.90 ERA and only struck out 123 hitters in 130.1 innings?
Gray was one of the worst acquisitions for the Yankees over the past few years, and similar to Boston, when players don’t do what they have to do on the mound or at the plate, fans are going to let them know.
“[The Yankees stint] just wasn’t a good situation for me. It wasn’t a great setup for me and my family. I never wanted to go there in the first place,” Gray said. “When that was happening, and we were in Oakland and getting traded — that was a long time ago — I never wanted to go there. So then I was there [with the Yankees], and it just didn’t really work for who I am.”
It’ll be interesting to see if those comments backfire in the future, but I suspect they will, as Gray isn’t what he once was.