Sonny Gray Lied to Yankees About Intentions Before Trade

Sonny Gray bashed the New York Yankees after being traded to the Boston Red Sox last week. According to Gray, he never wanted to uproot his family to play in the city. The starter even went as far as having a vengeful tone in his introductory presser, mentioning that he would find great joy in beating his old team and now American League East rival.

Brian Cashman will catch a lot of flak for the Yankees not winning a championship since 2009, but as far as Gray goes, he deserves little blame there. The longtime GM said that, before he made the deal with Oakland to acquire Gray for Dustin Fowler, James Kaprielian, and Jorge Mateo, he learned that the right-hander was telling people around the league he really wanted to play in New York.

Sonny Gray is happy to be in Boston 😅 pic.twitter.com/Aj7dpBbU52
— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) December 2, 2025

That tune changed once Cashman finally did pull the trigger with Oakland. Cashman recalled a story after the trade where he met with Gray in the office of Chad Bohling, the Yankees' senior director of organizational performance.

Brian Cashman Confronts Sonny Gray

According to the Associated Press, the GM said Gray revealed that he never wanted to be in New York, that he hated the city, and he spent all day in his hotel room.

"So then I told him, I said, but you said you wanted to be traded here. And he said, '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 are certain places that I don't want to go to.

"And I told him: Nothing I can do about it now. I wish you'd told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here," Cashman said. "We tried to do our homework. ... And I said so, now we'll just have to play the year out, and this winter I'll do whatever I can to move you, and we moved him to the Reds."

Sonny Gray wore a 2007 World Series hat during his Red Sox press conference today

He also raved about how much he loved the 2009 Yankees in a Players Tribune article when he got traded to New York in 2017 pic.twitter.com/PLLNMa7CHj
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) December 2, 2025

The story gets even more bizarre when Cashman reveals the lengths Gray went to be traded to New York during that 2017 season. Cashman said, at the time, the Yankees had a minor league video coordinator who went to Vanderbilt with Gray, and Gray told him, "Get me over," which couldn't be further from his actual intentions.

"Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. Blah, blah, blah," Cashman said of the conversation that he heard Gray had. "Like I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship. Blah, blah, blah. So, and it wasn't just him. He was communicating that to a number of different people that was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee."

Vouching for Sonny

If Sonny Gray truly did despise New York, then he had nobody but himself to blame. While in Oakland, it seemed like he told anybody who would listen that he wanted to be there. Then he went off sulking in his hotel room all day when the trade happened.

Also, running down the Yankees is a strange look because, despite his struggles and pitching to a 4.90 ERA in 2018, CC Sabathia, a team leader at the time, was vouching for Gray to come back once the season was over.

"The stuff was there, it was just a bad year, and took a step back. Hopefully, he will be back as a top-of-the-rotation guy," Sabathia told George King in an interview with the New York Post.

"He has a lot of baseball left for sure," Sabathia also said of Gray following that season. "He can be one of the best pitchers in baseball. When he came to the Yankees, he was one of the best in the game."

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