Sonny Gray’s Boston stay may end up being a one-year run, and the latest chatter keeps pushing him toward Atlanta.
Gray was everything the Red Sox could have asked for in 2026. Brought in as the No. 2 starter behind Garrett Crochet, he delivered one of the best seasons of his career and helped carry Boston into the playoffs.
The 37-year-old went 18-5, led the league in wins, posted a 2.72 ERA, and finished with a 149-to-46 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 169 innings. Without him, the Red Sox don’t make the turnaround they made.
Even with that kind of production, the fit for 2027 is far from clear. Gray is older, he’s expected to get paid this winter, and Boston has a strong rotation while needing to address other areas of the roster. That combination has fueled the belief that he’ll move on, and ESPN’s Paul Hembekides added more weight to that idea on Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney.
"I’m sending him to Atlanta," Hembekides said of Gray. "Two years, $42 million dollars.
I think the worst-kept secret in baseball is that he wants to live in the southeastern part of the country. I view the Braves as bringing him in, in addition as bringing back Tyler Mahle."
Hembekides is hardly alone. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentioned the Braves as a possible landing spot in October, and The Athletic’s Jim Bowden listed Atlanta as one of three options for Gray, alongside the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres.
The Braves keep coming up for a reason. They had interest in Gray before the trade deadline, and the repeated mentions from league insiders have made Atlanta look less like a dark horse and more like the team to watch.
WEEI’s Rob Bradford also said he’s "not optimistic" about Gray returning to Boston in 2027.
So while nothing is final, the momentum around the league is leaning hard away from a reunion. Gray’s mutual option was turned down, and for now the expectation is that he won’t be back in Boston. If that’s how it plays out, he’ll be remembered as a short-term Red Sox success story, right alongside names like Alex Bregman and Adrian Beltre.
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