Sonny Gray

Reds Place Sonny Gray On Injured List

By Anthony Franco | September 13, 2020 at 12:18pm CDT

The Reds have placed right-hander Sonny Gray on the 10-day injured list with a right mid-back strain, the team announced. Sal Romano has been selected to the roster in his stead. The IL placement is retroactive to Friday.

Gray has continued to shine in his second season in Cincinnati. Through 45.2 innings in nine starts, the right-hander has put up a 3.94 ERA/2.93 FIP with a career-best 30.6% strikeout rate. His 5.8 fWAR since the start of 2019 ranks thirteenth league-wide, a turnaround from a pair of down seasons with the Yankees. The Reds didn’t announce a timetable for his return, but there’s obviously not much time remaining for Gray to make it back in 2020. With just fifteen days left in the season, it’s possible this brings his campaign to an end. It’s certainly another blow to the 20-26 Reds’ faint hopes of mounting a playoff run.

The Reds waived the hard-throwing Romano over the winter, and he’ll now be making his first appearance on the MLB roster this season. Originally a starting pitcher, Romano moved to the Cincinnati bullpen full-time in 2019, where he put up a 7.71 ERA in 16.1 innings.

This Date In Transactions History: Sonny To Cincy

By Connor Byrne | January 21, 2020 at 8:46pm CDT

It was on this date a year ago that the Reds made one of their best pickups in recent memory. Then desperate for rotation help, the Reds took a flier on former standout right-hander Sonny Gray, acquiring him and young reliever Reiver Sanmartin from the Yankees in a three-team trade that also included the Mariners. The Yankees received middle infielder/outfielder Shed Long and a Competitive Balance Round A draft pick in the swap, though they quickly flipped Long to the Mariners for outfield prospect Josh Stowers.

It was obvious entering last offseason that the Yankees would try to trade Gray, whose tenure in their uniform was a letdown. The Yankees paid what was then a high price to acquire Gray, who was coming off a strong run in Oakland, back in July 2017. But Gray wasn’t the same pitcher in New York, particularly struggling at Yankee Stadium, and the club left him off its playoff roster in 2018. After that, general manager Brian Cashman admitted that “it’s probably best to try somewhere else” for Gray.

Twelve months later, the change of scenery has been a godsend for Gray and Reds. For the team, not only has the trade paid off, but the three-year, $30MM contract Cincy gave Gray the moment it acquired him looks like a bargain.

In his first season as a Red, the 30-year-old Gray performed like one of the premier starters in the sport and earned his second All-Star nod in the process. Gray tossed 175 1/3 innings, his most since 2015, and turned in the third-lowest ERA of his career (2.87). He also notched a 3.42 FIP with a 50.8 percent groundball rate and fanned more hitters than ever. Gray’s 10.52 K/9 was easily a personal best, while he also posted his second-highest swinging-strike percentage (11.3). When batters did make contact, they seldom did much damage, as Gray ranked near the top of the league in hard-hit rate, exit velocity and expected weighted on-base average against.

Despite Gray’s efforts, the Reds endured yet another sub-.500 season in 2019. However, he’s still among the reasons they now look like a team on the upswing. Gray, Luis Castillo, Trevor Bauer, Anthony DeSclafani and Wade Miley now make up one of the game’s most formidable-looking rotations on paper. That’s a drastic 180 for a club whose starting staff was among baseball’s worst the season before it hauled in Gray.

The Gray-less Yankees, for their part, appear to have an even better rotation than the Reds at this point. That said, no one knows whether they’ll get anything from the players they landed for Gray. Both Stowers and lefty TJ Sikkema, whom the Yankees chose with the pick they received in the trade, are still a ways off from the majors. The 22-year-old Stowers isn’t far removed from going in Round 2 of the 2018 draft, though, and he was plenty productive at the Single-A level last season, hitting .273/.386/.400 with 35 steals across 460 plate appearances. Sikkema, 21, had a very brief but very dominant showing in low-A ball after the Yankees drafted him.

As for the rebuilding Mariners, it looks as if they did well to insert themselves into this swap. Long joined the team as a promising prospect and then lived up to the billing in his first major league action last season. The 24-year-old amassed 168 PA and batted .263/.333/.454, also gaining a solid amount of experience at second base and in the outfield. Long figures to see even more time in Seattle this year, when the team no doubt hopes he’ll further demonstrate that he’s capable of serving as a core member of its roster.

Thanks to this trade, the Reds have a core piece for their rotation in Gray. A year into Gray’s time in Cincinnati, he and the team are surely thrilled with how their union has worked out.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Reds Notes: Brennaman, Votto, Gray, Barnhart

By Mark Polishuk | September 26, 2019 at 5:23pm CDT

The Reds played their last home game of the season today, which doubled the final game of Marty Brennaman’s 46-year career calling Reds baseball. The longtime radio broadcaster was feted by the team in ceremonies both before and after the game, giving the Cincinnati fans multiple chances to celebrate the man who has been a fixture behind the microphone since the days of the Big Red Machine teams. We at MLBTR congratulate Brennaman on a wonderful career, and wish him all the best in retirement.

Sonny Gray Undergoes Arthroscopic Elbow Surgery

By Steve Adams | September 25, 2019 at 3:04pm CDT

Reds right-hander Sonny Gray underwent an arthroscopic procedure to remove loose bodies from his right elbow today, the team announced. The procedure isn’t expected to impact his offseason training regimen, nor should it have any sort of impact on his availability for the beginning of Spring Training.

Cincinnati’s decision to buy low on Gray, who’ll turn 30 this winter, proved to be one of the best moves made by any team this winter. The Reds bet big on Gray not only by trading Shed Long and a Competitive Balance Round A draft pick to obtain the former Oakland ace but also by inking him to a three-year, $30.5MM extension that covers the 2020-22 seasons.

Gray put a forgettable 2018 season with the Yankees squarely in the rear-view mirror by not simply returning to his 2017 form but arguably by delivering the best season of his career. Through 175 1/3 innings, the 2011 first-rounder logged a 2.87 ERA (3.43 FIP, 3.65 xFIP) with a career-high 10.5 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Gray’s average of 3.5 walks per nine frames was up from the 2015 season in which he finished third in American League Cy Young voting, but he also managed to allow just 0.87 homers per nine innings pitched. That’s a strong number in any season but is particularly impressive when pitching in the cozy confines of Great American Ball Park during 2019’s record-setting home run boom.

With Gray and midseason acquisition Trevor Bauer now in the plans for 2020, joining holdovers Luis Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani, the Reds look to have the foundation for an extremely strong starting staff in place. There’ll be work to do elsewhere on the roster this winter, but the Reds’ pitching next season could be more formidable than at any point in recent memory.

Sonny Gray Reflects On Yankees Tenure

By Jeff Todd | July 9, 2019 at 11:33am CDT

Reds hurler Sonny Gray isn’t bitter about his tenure with the Yankees, but that doesn’t mean he’s in denial about his struggles there. As Ken Davidoff of the New York Post writes, the 29-year-old All-Star values his time in New York precisely because of the difficulties he faced.

Gray says his experience with the Yanks was “absolutely” a positive one, even though he ended up being left off the postseason roster on the heels of a brutal regular season (4.90 ERA in 130 1/3 innings).

“I think everyone kind of knows that New York wasn’t a great fit for me, place for me, last year,” says Gray. “It just didn’t seem to work out, for whatever reason. But looking back, I wouldn’t change one thing about it.”

Quite often, parting transactions leave at least one involved party with hard feelings. Not so here. Gray facilitated the three-team deal that delivered him to Cincinnati by agreeing to a three-year extension (plus option). That contract now appears to be quite an appealing one for the Reds, who also acquired lefty Reiver Sanmartin in the deal. But it also wasn’t a bad bit of security for Gray to achieve at the time, particularly given his wavering output in two of the three preceding seasons.

On the other side of the swap, the Yanks got some nice parting gifts. Outfielder Josh Stowers came aboard when the club shipped former Reds prospect Shed Long straight to the Mariners, who have already received big-league contributions from Long. And the New York organization just used the comp pick it received from the Cincinnati club to select southpaw TJ Sikkema. (The original deal to acquire Gray from the A’s also hasn’t stung the Bronx Bombers — not yet, at least.)

Gray says he’s stronger for the difficult experience. He certainly has bounced back with aplomb, slinging 90 1/3 innings of 3.59 ERA ball with 10.3 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9. By most metrics, he’s much the same pitcher as before. But Gray seems to be squeezing more out of his tools, inducing much less hard contact (33.9% after surrendering 39.5% last year, per Statcast) and generating a career-high 27.8% K rate despite continuing to sport similar swinging-strike marks.

Sonny Gray Looks Reborn

By Connor Byrne | May 28, 2019 at 8:02pm CDT

Two years after the Athletics chose Sonny Gray 18th overall in the 2011 draft, the right-hander made his major league debut at the age of 23 and quickly became one of the game’s premier young hurlers. From 2013-15, a 491-inning span, Gray posted the majors’ 10th-lowest ERA (2.88), 11th-best groundball percentage (54.2) and 31st-ranked FIP (3.36) among starters. Gray was a front-end rotation piece at that point, but injury issues helped knock him off the rails in 2016. Gray rebounded a season later, but the Athletics elected to cash him and his remaining year and a half of control in at that July’s trade deadline.

The A’s sent Gray to the Yankees in what became a failed union between him and New York. In 2018 – Gray’s lone full season with the club – he produced abysmal results at the hitter-friendly Yankee Stadium, where he ran up a 6.98 ERA as batters teed off on him for a .318/.406/.527 line. Gray’s struggles convinced the Yankees to pull him from their rotation during the summer and then leave him off their playoff roster in the fall.

It quickly became obvious in the offseason the Yankees would move on from Gray, who general manager Brian Cashman admitted needed a change of scenery. In January, three-plus months after Cashman telegraphed Gray’s exit, he traded the 29-year-old to the starter-starved Reds.

Before Gray ever threw a pitch in a Cincinnati uniform, the team signed him to a three-year, $30.5MM extension to prevent him from testing free agency during the upcoming winter. Well, two months into the season, that contract looks like a steal. Gray has come back with a vengeance as a member of the Reds, with whom he has posted a 3.54 ERA/2.99 FIP through 56 innings. Along the way, Gray has registered career bests in strikeout rate (10.29 per nine), groundball percentage (55.9), infield fly percentage (10.8) and contact rate (73.7 percent). Furthermore, even though Gray ranks near the bottom of the league in strike percentage for the second straight year, he has decreased his walk rate 2018 (from 3.94 to 3.54). He has also given up home runs on just 10.8 percent of fly balls, down from a combined 15.3 percent from 2016-18.

It’s probably fair to credit some of Gray’s revival to Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson, who was also Gray’s pitching coach at Vanderbilt, though his impact is difficult to quantify. It seems to have helped that Gray has moved back to his high-spin four-seam fastball, a pitch the Yankees discouraged from throwing. Gray has gone to the pitch 37.7 percent of the time this year after throwing it at a 26.5 percent clip in 2018. But it’s Gray’s slider and sinker – offerings he has used at a combined 38.1 percent rate – that have been his most effective pitches this year, per Statcast. Hitters have mustered a horrid .102 weighted on-base average against Gray’s slider and a weak .260 mark off his sinker. All told, Gray’s expansive repertoire has limited batters to a .278 wOBA, which is right in line with his .272 xwOBA. Both of those figures are roughly 50-point improvements from the numbers Gray recorded in those categories during his forgettable 2018 as a Yankee.

Thanks in no small part to Gray’s resurgence, the Reds’ rotation has leapt from horrid to good in a year. Last season’s staff hung out at the bottom of the league’s pitching leaderboard, whereas Gray & Co. entered Tuesday fourth in ERA and fWAR. If not for the Reds’ disappointing offense, albeit one that’s throttling the Pirates at the moment, perhaps they’d be serious playoff contenders.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Central Injury Notes: Darvish, Gray, Duffy, Dunning

By Jeff Todd and Steve Adams | February 26, 2019 at 7:23pm CDT

Though he was clearly carrying plenty of rust, Cubs righty Yu Darvish nevertheless turned in a rather promising first spring outing today, as MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian writes. Darvish says he felt great and the radar guns reflected it. While he struggled a bit to stay in the zone, that’s a secondary concern at this point given the major health ailments that ruined his 2018 season. With $101MM still owed to Darvish over the next five years, the Cubs have to be encouraged to see him feeling strong, though he still has a ways to go to reestablish himself as a front-line starter.

More health notes from the central divisions …

Reds right-hander Sonny Gray, who was scratched from his spring debut due to some elbow stiffness, is expected to throw a bullpen session Thursday, writes MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. The team’s most notable offseason addition to the rotation, Gray will also throw from flat ground at a distance of 120 feet today, per the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Fay (Twitter link). Manager David Bell told Feinsand that Gray was initially concerned about the elbow discomfort but is in vastly better spirits and has felt improvement each day since being scratched. For the time being, it seems, the Reds have decreasing reason to be concerned about Gray’s status.
The Royals are “backing off” from using Danny Duffy for the time being, manager Ned Yost tells reporters (Twitter links via Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star). The southpaw experienced tightness in his shoulder and had difficulty getting loose for his latest side session, though he eventually completed that session. Duffy feels it’s a minor issue and some standard-issue early spring stiffness. The Royals are already down a rotation candidate with righty Trevor Oaks perhaps headed for hip surgery, and subtracting arguably their most talented starter from the mix would be a considerably more damaging blow. Duffy, 30, struggled through a down season in 2018 but was Kansas City’s best arm in 2016-17 when he worked to a 3.64 ERA with 8.8 K/9 against 2.3 BB/9 in 326 innings.
There was some ominous news out of White Sox camp, as Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com tweets that pitching prospect Dane Dunning is due for a closer medical look after experiencing forearm discomfort. The talented young righty has shown quite well ever since he cracked the professional ranks and entered the 2018 campaign as a consensus top-100 prospect leaguewide. Unfortunately, he missed half of the 2018 season owing to an elbow sprain. The hope was that Dunning would be able to pick up where he left off this spring.

Quick Hits: Reds, Gray, Rangers, Red Sox, Porcello

By TC Zencka | February 23, 2019 at 12:36pm CDT

The Reds rotation upgrades are the story of their winter, though impending free agency for Alex Wood and Tanner Roark means there’s not much time for this unit to gel. Their third big addition, Sonny Gray, is the most significant of the three if only because he immediately signed a three year, $30.5MM extension. Unfortunately, Reds fans will have to wait for Gray’s debut, as he was scratched from his start today with right elbow stiffness, per the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Fay. Gray came to camp sore a couple days after throwing a bullpen session, but the hope is a little extra rest will get Gray right again. The team did not perform an MRI, and there’s no reason to suspect anything serious at this time. Time to check in on another couple of stories from around the league…

Each January, the Rangers invite a select group of top pitching prospects for a week-long mini-camp with the major league staff in advance of Spring Training, per Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. This season, however, they sent an even smaller group of about ten pitchers to a “secret secondary-pitch intensive.” The camp takes place at Driveline Baseball, an increasingly ballyhooed research and development consultant founded by Kyle Boddy. Trevor Bauer is one noted client, as is a couple of potential feel-good stories of 2019, Kyle Zimmer of the Royals and the Cubs 37-year-old rookie Luke Hagerty. Among the Rangers sent to Driveline were bullpen hopefuls like C.D. Pelham, Brett Martin, Michael Matuella, Jason Bahr, Nick Snyder and Brady Feigl. The exact purpose of the camp remains unclear, and Jon Daniels and the Rangers have been none too keen to speak on the subject. Still, the Driveline story is one to track throughout the year, as we may be hearing more from the innovative research group.
Rick Porcello is open to furthering his time with the Red Sox, but they have yet to approach him about an extension, per Rob Bradford of WEEI Sports Radio Network. Porcello excelled in 2016 when he was able to limit walks and home runs en route to winning 22 games and the AL Cy Young, despite a FIP of only 3.40. Now in the final year of the four year, $82.5MM deal signed before that season, Porcello’s market value is tricky to pinpoint. The Cy Young raises his profile, though he remains closer to a mid-rotation workhorse than a top-of-the-rotation ace. He has a career 4.02 FIP, but he’s also on a remarkable run of durability that makes him an outlier in this era – he has started between 27 and 33 games each season for ten years running. Porcello, 30, is likely not as high on the Red Sox priority list as Chris Sale, Mookie Betts, and Xander Bogaerts.

NL Notes: Realmuto, Dodgers, Braves, Markakis, Cardinals, Gray

By Steve Adams | January 22, 2019 at 9:40pm CDT

The Dodgers’ recent acquisition of Russell Martin hasn’t taken them out of the running for Marlins star J.T. Realmuto, reports Joe Frisaro of MLB.com. To the contrary, the Dodgers are still discussing a potential Realmuto deal with Miami, and catching prospect Keibert Ruiz is among the names Miami is targeting. Although he opened the 2018 season at just 19 years of age, Ruiz spent the entire season with the Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate. Ruiz was nearly five years younger than the average player in the Double-A Texas League, but the switch-hitter nevertheless held his own, hitting .268/.328/.401 with a dozen home runs and 14 doubles in a career-high 415 plate appearances. Ruiz also demonstrated preternatural bat-to-ball abilities, striking out in only eight percent of his plate appearances. He currently ranks 36th among all MLB prospects on the latest rankings from Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs.

Here’s more from the Senior Circuit…

Nick Markakis told reporters on today’s conference call that he had larger offers in both overall value and in guaranteed length but felt strongly about returning to the Braves for a fifth season (link via Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Markakis re-upped with Atlanta on a one-year deal worth a guaranteed $6MM — a $4MM salary in 2019 and a $2MM buyout on a $6MM option for the 2020 season — and general manager Alex Anthopoulos indicated that the unexpectedly affordable rate could help the Braves accomplish some other offseason goals. “Nick coming back on these terms allow us to pursue other things, have financial flexibility to improve the club in other ways,” said Anthopoulos. (David O’Brien of The Athletic tweets that the team’s next move may not occur until Spring Training is underway, though.) Burns notes that Markakis won’t suit up for all 162 games next season, as he did in 2018, which the club believes will help the 35-year-old to stay fresher and to avoid a second-half slump.
Signing Paul Goldschmidt to an extension could be a bit more complicated for the Cardinals than many would think, as Mark Saxon of The Athletic explores in his latest column (subscription required). Goldschmidt has already signed what turned out to be one exceptionally team-friendly extension, and as the former union representative for the D-backs, he takes particular umbrage with team owners’ increasing reluctance toward spending in free agency. Saxon wonders whether Goldschmidt will feel obligated to push for a maximum-value contract given his views, though he emphasizes that Goldschmidt himself has declined to discuss his feelings about a new contract. And, as Saxon further writes, there are no indications that talks between the Cardinals and Goldschmidt’s agent, Casey Close, have begun.
Sonny Gray spoke with reporters about his decision to sign an extension with the Reds before ever suiting up for a single game with the team (link via Bobby Nightengale Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer). Gray noted that his relationship with newly hired pitching coach Derek Johnson, who previously was his pitching coach at Vanderbilt, played a significant role in the decision. The Reds also have one of Gray’s college battery-mates, Curt Casali, on the roster as a backup to starter Tucker Barnhart. Gray also explained that his late father was a Reds fan, adding that the first MLB game he ever attended as a child was at Great American Ball Park. As to what prompted his struggles in New York this past season, Gray was uncertain but said he feels stronger having endured the struggles. “I honestly think you can go through some hardships at times and come out the other end better than you ever were,” Gray said.

Reds Acquire, Extend Sonny Gray As Part Of Three-Team Trade

By Steve Adams | January 21, 2019 at 4:15pm CDT

After several days of reporting and speculation, right-hander Sonny Gray has officially been traded from the Yankees to the Reds and also agreed to a contract extension with Cincinnati. It’s a three-team deal that also involves the Mariners. Second base prospect Shed Long and a Competitive Balance Round A pick go from the Reds to the Yankees in exchange for Gray and left-hander Reiver Sanmartin. New York, in turn, has flipped Long directly to the Mariners in return for center field prospect Josh Stowers — the Mariners’ second-round pick in the 2018 draft.

As part of the trade, Gray has agreed to a new, three-year contract extension with the Reds that’ll span the 2020-22 seasons. He’ll earn $30.5MM over those three campaigns — that’s in addition to his $7.5MM salary for the 2019 season. Along with a $500K signing bonus, the deal reportedly promises $10MM in each of its three years and also comes with a $12MM club option for the 2023 season. There are $500K worth of incentives in each new season of the deal, with that value achievable in full at 190 innings pitched, and his annual salaries can grow based on performance escalators. Gray’s contract doesn’t contain a no-trade clause but stipulates that he be paid a $1MM assignment bonus each time he is traded.

Cincinnati emerged as a front-runner to land Gray last Friday, and his addition will be the third such pickup of the Reds’ offseason, joining lefty Alex Wood and fellow righty Tanner Roark. That trio will be added to a new-look Cincinnati rotation that’s also projected to include holdovers Luis Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani. It’s a group that should give the Reds a vastly more competitive outlook in 2019 while likely pushing names such as Robert Stephenson, Brandon Finnegan, Tyler Mahle, Jackson Stephens and others out of the Major League rotation mix and either into bullpen roles or back to the minors (Stephenson, it should be noted, is out of options).

A change of scenery for Gray, 29, only makes sense after he struggled profusely with the Yankees in 2018 — particularly when pitching at Yankee Stadium. Gray posted a ghastly 6.98 ERA at home in 2018 compared to a 3.17 ERA on the road, and while there’s surely more at play in those splits than the surface-level numbers exhibit, the contrast between the two numbers is unequivocally jarring.

The Reds quite likely found it encouraging that Gray’s velocity remained consistent with its previous levels (93.8 mph average fastball), that his swinging-strike rate remained north of 10 percent and that his ground-ball tendencies (50 percent) remained above the league average. Gray actually allowed home runs at his lowest rate since 2015 as well (0.97 HR/9; 13.3% HR/FB), despite pitching more than 40 percent of his innings at the homer-friendly Yankee Stadium. Of course, he’ll be moving to a similarly hitter-friendly setting in the form of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, though the move to the National League should prove beneficial.

With the extension now in place, the trade of Gray differs starkly from Cincinnati’s acquisition of Wood and Roark, each of whom is a pure one-year rental. In essence, it’s a bet that the move into a lower-pressure setting could help Gray in a similar manner that Matt Harvey seemed to benefit following his own trade over from the Mets this past May. Gray, it should be noted, is not far removed from an extended run as a high-quality arm; the former No. 18 overall draft pick entered the 2018 season with a career 3.45 ERA in 770 1/3 innings, highlighted by an All-Star nod and a third-place Cy Young finish in 2015.

While it may be too much to expect for Gray to return to those lofty heights, he at the very least has the potential to help comprise a radically improved Reds rotation and gives the team some long-term stability a a time when many of the pitching prospects acquired over the course of Cincinnati’s rebuild have yet failed to pan out.

Cincinnati will also add a left-handed option to the middle levels of its farm system in the form of Sanmartin. While he wasn’t considered to be one of the organization’s top prospects, Sanmartin reached Double-A for the first time last season, at the age of 22, and pitched to an overall 2.81 ERA with a 58-to-4 K/BB ratio in 67 1/3 innings between Class-A, Class-A Advanced and Double-A. New York originally acquired Sanmartin out of the Rangers organization in a swap that sent righty Ronald Herrera to Texas.

Long, meanwhile, will head to the Mariners in a surprise development and give Seattle a prospect that is not far from big league readiness. The 23-year-old Long was a 12th-round pick by the Reds back in 2013 but has vastly outperformed that draft billing, rising to the Double-A ranks and hitting at a .261/.353/.412 clip with a dozen homers and 19 stolen bases this past season. Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs ranked Long seventh among Reds farmhands just last month, noting that the converted catcher still has some defensive question marks at second base. That said, he has the bat to profile as a regular there if he can improve his glovework, and if not, he could move to an outfield corner.

Stowers, in turn, is several years further from the point where he’d need to be added to the 40-man roster in New York. He went a round or two higher in the draft than many expected on the heels of a strong finish to his college season at Louisville, and it seems that given New York’s quick acquisition of him, the Mariners weren’t the only ones who hoped to snag him in the draft’s early rounds. The Yankees will also acquire a pick that is currently slotted in at No. 36 overall but could move a bit, depending on the outcome of the remaining free agents who rejected qualifying offers (and the subsequent draft pick compensation attached to them). The No. 36 slot last season came with a $1.967MM slot value, meaning the Yankees have likely added another $2MM+ to their bonus pool in the 2019 draft.

A trade of Gray has been expected since early in the offseason since Yankees general manager Brian Cashman openly spoke about his desire to find a change of scenery for Gray. Today’s swap gives the Yankees a rotation consisting of Luis Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, J.A. Happ and CC Sabathia. With Gray no longer in the fold, the Yankees’ top depth options are Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga, Luis Cessa and Chance Adams. The organization likely hopes to have lefty Jordan Montgomery, who underwent Tommy John surgery early last summer, can return late in the 2019 season, though it certainly possesses ample rotation depth even if he’s shelved into the 2020 season.

The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported Friday that the Reds were closing in on a deal to acquire Gray. Fancred’s Jon Heyman tweeted over the weekend that Long and the draft pick would likely be involved in the deal, if completed. Rosenthal first added that the trade could hinge on an extension. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported today that Gray had been traded, confirming Long’s inclusion and adding that he’d been flipped to Seattle for Stowers. Rosenthal reported the extension and the terms of Gray’s new contract, with Bob Nightengale of USA Today adding salary details. Bobby Nightengale Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer added Sanmartin’s inclusion in the swap. Heyman tweeted the trade assignment bonus.

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