Brian Cashman Opens Up on Sonny Gray’s Yankees Tenure: “He Never Wanted to Be Here”
ORLANDO - The Winter Meetings are usually about building rosters and big-money signings, but this year, Yankees GM Brian Cashman used the spotlight to revisit one of the more frustrating chapters of his tenure: the short-lived and ultimately sour stint of Sonny Gray in pinstripes.
Gray, recently traded from the Cardinals to the Red Sox, raised eyebrows last week with a jab at his former club, saying he “never” wanted to play for the Yankees and that Boston is “where it’s easy to hate the Yankees.” That comment didn’t sit quietly with Cashman, who gave reporters a candid look behind the curtain of Gray’s 2017 acquisition - and the disconnect that followed.
“He Hates New York”
According to Cashman, when Gray was still with the Oakland A’s, he was actively campaigning to join the Yankees - at least, that’s what he was telling people inside the organization.
“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 those weren’t isolated comments - Gray had expressed that desire to several people in the Yankees’ orbit. But just over a year later, during a conversation at Yankee Stadium after the 2018 trade deadline passed without a move, the truth came out.
“That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here,” Cashman said. “He hates New York.
‘This is the worst place.’ He just sits in his hotel room.”
It was a gut punch for a front office that believed it had landed a front-line starter with postseason upside. And it left Cashman wondering what had gone wrong - or if they’d ever really had the full picture to begin with.
A Blame Game Emerges
When Cashman reminded Gray of the conversations he’d had about wanting to be a Yankee, Gray reportedly pointed the finger at his agent, Bo McKinnis.
“(McKinnis) told me to do that,” Cashman recalled Gray saying. According to Cashman, Gray claimed his agent advised him to express interest in all teams - even if it wasn’t genuine - because being selective could hurt his market value in future free agency.
McKinnis, for his part, firmly pushed back on that version of events. In a statement, he said Gray had no no-trade clause with the A’s in 2017 and therefore had no input on where he would be sent. He also denied that Gray ever expressed a desire to leave Oakland or that he instructed Gray to mislead teams.
“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,” McKinnis said.
He later followed up with a pointed response to Cashman’s claims: “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.”
McKinnis also disputed that Gray ever said he wanted out of Oakland, saying his client “loved his time with the A’s.”
A Misfit from the Start
Gray’s time in New York was rocky from the jump. After arriving midseason in 2017, he went 4-7 with a 3.72 ERA in 11 starts - respectable numbers on paper, but he never seemed to mesh with then-pitching coach Larry Rothschild or the Yankees’ approach to game planning.
In 2018, things got worse. Gray struggled to an 8-7 record with a 5.08 ERA over 20 starts before the trade deadline.
Cashman said Gray had expected to be dealt by then and was surprised when he wasn’t. That’s when the two sat down at Yankee Stadium, and Gray finally admitted he never wanted to be in New York in the first place.
Cashman told him, “I wish you would have told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here.”
The Yankees had paid a significant price to land Gray, sending prospects Dustin Fowler, James Kaprielian and Jorge Mateo to Oakland. At the time, Gray was a former All-Star (2015) and viewed as a high-upside arm who could thrive under the bright lights of the Bronx. But instead, he spent just 538 days with the Yankees, finishing with a 15-16 record and a 4.51 ERA in 41 games (34 starts), often hearing boos from the home crowd.
By January 2019, the Yankees had seen enough and traded him to the Cincinnati Reds - where, of course, he promptly returned to All-Star form. He later repeated that success with the Minnesota Twins, and now he heads to Boston as one of the key arms in the Red Sox’s rotation.
A Lesson in Fit - and Honesty
The Gray-Yankees saga is a case study in how a player’s fit with a team goes far beyond stats and scouting reports. It’s about mindset, comfort, chemistry - and yes, honesty.
Cashman’s comments make it clear: the Yankees believed they were getting a pitcher who wanted to be part of their championship chase. Instead, they got someone who, by his own admission, never wanted to be there.
“I told him, ‘Nothing I can do about it now,’” Cashman said. “We tried to do our homework.”
Sometimes, even the best-laid plans fall apart - especially when the truth doesn’t come out until it’s too late.