Sonny Gray left the Wild Card series with plenty to feel good about in the moment and even more reason to feel sour afterward.
The veteran right-hander was one of the few bright spots for the Boston Red Sox in their ugly two-game loss to the New York Yankees. Gray worked 4.2 strong innings, allowing two runs on six hits while striking out five.
He kept hard contact to a minimum, with the lone real damage coming on an unlucky home run by Luis Garcia Jr. Whenever the Yankees managed a hit, Gray answered quickly and kept the inning from spiraling.
Then Chad Tracy pulled him, and the night unraveled.
It was the same story the night before with Payton Tolle. Boston’s starting pitching was the one thing keeping the games from getting away entirely, but the offense never gave the staff much support. Still, the hook came early again, and Gray made it clear afterward that he didn’t think the move was justified.
Before the postseason, Gray had left the door open a crack on retirement before 2027. After the Wild Card, he shut down that speculation with one line: "I got a lot of baseball left in me" (subscription required). But when the conversation turned to whether he might finish his career in Boston, Gray didn’t sound like a pitcher planning a return trip.
Asked if he would consider pitching with the Red Sox again, Gray simply said, "I don't know."
That answer carried plenty of weight after the season he just put together. Gray posted a 2.72 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP, 149 strikeouts and 46 walks over 169 innings.
He also won a career-high and league-leading 18 games, and Boston was strong enough around him to make the whole thing work. But the playoff exit - and the decision to lift him while he was still dealing - seems to have soured the relationship.
Gray was emotional about the quick exit and said he wanted the Red Sox to trust him more, especially given the body of work he’d built. From his perspective, the organization had the proof in front of it and still didn’t stick with him when it mattered most.
He wasn’t the only veteran to take issue with how Boston handled things. Willson Contreras also criticized the organization’s heavy reliance on models after the Wild Card loss. The overall feeling from Gray’s side was blunt: the dugout had no feel for those games, and if it had, he would have stayed in.
Gray was the only right-handed starter in the Red Sox rotation, so a reunion would have made obvious sense. Instead, Boston now heads into the offseason having alienated its ace in the biggest moment of the year and will need to look elsewhere for right-handed pitching.
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Later, Tracy turned to Garrett Crochet, who had not pitched in the major leagues since April because of injuries, as the bullpen choices kept shaping the evening. Bostons offense never gave the pitching staff much support, and the combination of missed chances and middle-inning turbulence sent the Red Sox out of the postseason with one decision sure to linger. [Read more 🡒]