The Sonny Gray noise that followed the Yankees’ Wild Card Series win over the Red Sox appears to be going nowhere.
Gray’s Game 2 start in the Bronx drew attention after viewers spotted visible debris on the side of his neck. It looked more like sweat, dirt and rosin than anything illegal such as pine tar, but that didn’t stop the chatter from taking off.
A Jomboy Media breakdown of Gray repeatedly touching his neck helped push the moment into full-blown internet debate, and plenty of Yankees fans used it as another chance to revisit old grievances against the right-hander. On Tuesday, though, Chris Cotillo of MassLive reported that Major League Baseball had at least “looked into” the matter and that Gray seemed likely to avoid any punishment.
“I’m told MLB looked into Sonny Gray potentially using sticky stuff in his Game 2 start in the Bronx last week - but he obviously passed in-game standard checks without penalty, which suggests he is in the clear," wrote Cotillo. "Any discipline would likely have been levied by now anyway.”
Gray’s actual outing was better than the numbers made it look. Boston pulled him with two outs in the fifth inning as part of an aggressive plan to match up against the Yankees’ left-handed hitters, and the move backfired quickly when Cody Bellinger singled off reliever Erik Miller to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-0 hole and charge Gray with a second earned run.
The Yankees got the final word in the series, but their fans’ victory lap comes with an asterisk of its own, given how much of the Gray uproar seems to have been fueled by suspicion rather than anything concrete.
Rewatching the Jomboy clip, it’s also pretty clear Jimmy O’Brien was having some fun with the whole thing, which is part of the content game.
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