Brian Cashman Fires Back After Red Sox’s Sonny Gray Disses Yankees

The Boston Red Sox acquired Sonny Gray from the St. Louis Cardinals earlier in the offseason and it didn't take long for him to win over Boston fans.

Gray popped up for his opening press conference as a member of the Red Sox donning a 2007 World Series hat and proceeded to diss the Yankees -- where he previously had a stint -- right away.

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"I never wanted to go there in the first place... but I do appreciate my time there," Gray said. “It’s easy to go to a place now where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.”

This was the comment heard around the baseball world. Gray's shots at the Yankees were received and on Sunday night, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman spoke from the Winter Meetings and responded to Gray's comments by saying he was telling the Yankees another story initially.

Sonny Gray's comments have got people talking

"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 a failed marriage," The Athletic's Brendan Kuty wrote. " 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.'"

Cashman did note that Gray eventually told him that he didn't want to be a member of the Yankees.

"That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here,” Cashman said of the 2018 season, as transcribed by Kuty. “He hates New York. ‘This is the worst place.’ He just sits in his hotel room.”

Kuty also got a quote from agent Bo McKinnis responding to Cashman.

"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 to Kuty. “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...

"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.”

Gray has only been in Boston for a short while but he's already got people talking.

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