Quality Control: Sonny Gray Just Keeps Getting Better
There's a lot to like about the 36 year old veteran
The Red Sox have now made two noteworthy acquisitions this off-season, both in the starting pitching department. First it was the trade for St. Louis Cardinals 36 year old veteran starter Sonny Gray last week, and yesterday it was announced they were sending “The Password” Jhostynxon Garcia to the Pirates for Johan Oviedo.
The book on Gray is pretty well known. He’s been a major league starter since he broke in with the then Oakland Athletics in 2013, and has enjoyed a 13 year career marked with consistency and the ability to make adjustments to stay one step ahead of the aging curve. His path has led him to Boston, the sixth stopping point of his career.
He is quietly one of the more underrated pitchers in the sport. Five times he has finished in the top ten in ERA. His career ERA of 3.58 is 13th among currently active major leaguers. He has two top three Cy Young finishes, coming in third place in 2015 when he posted a 143 ERA+, and again when he was the AL runner up in 2023.
2023 was the season where Gray let it be known he wasn’t done yet. He led the major leagues in FIP that season, and eclipsed 200 strikeouts, something he’s done three times in his career.
In the last two seasons, Gray has posted consecutive career highs in SO/BB ratio. This development is honestly shocking and shifts a major change in skill performance. The highest mark of his career before 2024 was 3.35 in only 64 innings in his rookie year. In 2024 he posted a 5.21 mark and bested it in 2025 with a new career high 5.29, as you can see in the yellow column of the below table.
If there’s any indication here it’s that Gray has gotten better at limiting walks. While his stuff has actually gotten worse in recent years, grading out as below average on stuff+ models, his command, control, and pitchability has gone up. Have a look at this.
The Red Sox have been one of the smarter pitch design organizations for a couple of years, so it’s exciting when a crafty pitcher who knows how to manipulate the ball well like Gray lands in Boston. Last year Statcast had him at seven different offerings.
The Sox pitching coaches/ execs like to hone in on things pitchers do well, and stuff+ indicates his sweeper is the only above average pitch in the arsenal. They may encourage him to lean on it a little bit more, as one of Andrew Bailey’s much reiterated philosophies is to take the thing(s) you do well and do it more often. Gray has been successful at this stage of his career by mixing up his wide arsenal of pitches to keep hitters guessing and off balance. I could see his approach becoming more centered around his best pitch, but its also one of those things where its a big league vet who knows what he’s doing, so you leave him be and let him be a leader to others.
For a guy like Tanner Houck, you tell him to throw the slider as much as possible, which they did because his fastball (sinker and four seam) stunk and his slider is unGodly. Taking that sort of approach with Gray wouldn’t make much sense even though his best “stuff” pitch is the slider as well. I am interested to see if Gray looks different from the pitcher he’s been the last couple of seasons from an approach and overall profile standpoint.
That being said, I don’t feel like the reason they traded for him was to get him in their pitch design lab and start changing everything and remolding him into what they want. I believe they love the way he’s aging and look at him as a veteran guy to bring in and be a crafty, sustainable starting pitcher to lead the young pitchers and also be a productive member of the rotation.