Before the season started, I told you readers here, my Twitter followers, family, friends, coworkers–basically anyone I talk baseball with–that I thought Sonny Gray was going to have a huge year. Fast forward to April 25. If I could’ve found and quote tweeted when I said Gray would have a big year, the text could read “…and then what happened?” Through those five starts, his ERA was pushing 8. His OPS against was .846. For reference, Tony Gwynn, Anthony Rizzo, Nap Lajoie, Tony Lazzeri, and Andres Galarraga all have career a career OPS of about .846. He pitched into the fifth inning just twice and three times failed to complete even four innings. Something was seriously wrong and Sonny was pushing the clouds in, rather than away.
Over at FanGraphs, Sheryl Ring suggested that the Yankees’ fastball-light approach to pitching was hurting Gray. In his two most recent starts–undoubtedly his most successful ones of the year–Sonny returned to throwing more fastballs. Before his start on April 30, he threw fastballs and sinkers/two-seamers just over 47% of the time. In that April 30 start against Houston and yesterday’s against Cleveland, Gray threw a total of 190 pitches, 123 of which–about 65%–were fastballs or sinkers/two-seamers. With the typical caveat about correlation and causation, going back to number one has righted the ship for Sonny. Encouragingly, these starts came against heavy-hitting teams in Houston and Cleveland, hardly lineups to scoff at. His next start–assuming the Yankees keep him on turn and don’t push him back a day due to the off day tomorrow–will be against the Athletics, another offensively powerful team.
The last time Gray faced Boston–in Fenway on April 12–he turned in his worst start of the year, surrendering six runs on seven hits and two walks in just three innings (at least he had three strikeouts?). In that start, he was actually pretty reliant on his fastball , which wasn’t what I was expecting when I went searching, given the disparity in results between his most recent, fastball-heavy starts and his earlier ones, less reliant on fastballs. Despite those results, Gray should stick with the fastballs against Boston again. The same goes for the A’s if he sees them instead.
Not to go too deep into intangibles here, but confidence is most definitely a thing, and if Sonny believes his fastballs will work–like it did these last two starts–maybe they’ll continue to be successful. Considering how poorly this season started for him, anything to help him climb from that hole will be welcomed. Selfishly, I just want to be right about Gray having a big year; magnanimously, I want him to do well for both his own sake and that of the team.
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