Sonny still can’t get on track in win
Sonny Gray looked first and foremost at the bottom line.
And the bottom line contained a Yankees victory, 7-4 over Minnesota at the Stadium Wednesday. On the journey down to that line were some numbers that indicated this was yet another rough outing for Gray. For the fourth time in five starts — and the third straight — Gray failed to complete five innings. But the Yankees won, and that trumps all. “I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m struggling right now. I don’t think it’s something that is trying to be hidden,” said Gray, who lasted 4 2/3 innings and surrendered six hits and three earned runs while walking five, his biggest blemish of the game.
“But at the end of the day when you start a winner, you can go to sleep and you can walk away from it with ultimately the biggest positive in my opinion that a starting pitcher can walk away [with] no matter how it gets done or what you yourself do. If you start a game that comes away with a W, it’s a positive.” Well, he did that. Gray was one strike away from completing the fifth inning to get in line for the victory. But his 104th and final pitch missed the strike zone and he left with the bases loaded and the Yankees leading, 6-3.
“I think there are a lot of positives to take away from it. I felt good out there. I wasn’t necessarily able to get in some type of rhythm but at the end of the day when you can come away with a win then you go home happy,” said Gray, who took a liner off the back of his arm — no harm, he said — from Joe Mauer in that fifth inning. “It was a struggle at times but at the end of the day I felt I had the right mentality, the right mindset.”
So if Gray presented a happy and peppy face after a less than overwhelming effort, his manager, Aaron Boone, went above and beyond.
“I thought it was a big step forward. I thought his compete was really good,” said Boone, who had claimed he wanted to see Gray more in attack mode.
Well, the attack resulted in those five walks.
“That’s what kept it from being a giant step forward,” Boone said. “But I was encouraged by what I saw.”