Sonny Gray is a good pitcher, and Boston Red Sox fans don’t seem to realize it.
Yes, ERA still matters in Major League Baseball. But Gray’s 4.28 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals last season is offset by his 3.39 FIP, 5.29 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and a bunch of other metrics that show he’s likely still somewhere between an average No. 2 starter and a high-end No. 3.
However, there are lots of doomers in Red Sox land in the wake of Tuesday’s blockbuster trade, ranging from seasoned beat writers to angry fans. Some are already assuming bigger additions aren’t coming to help the rotation, while others are convinced Gray is no better than Lucas Giolito, who the Red Sox are presumably uninterested in bringing back as a free agent.
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Breslow on why Gray deal was right move
In his first comments after the trade was made official, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow summed up multiple reasons why Boston was more than smart to make the trade, and why overreacting in a negative way at this stage of the offseason truly makes no sense.
“Sonny is a guy who has been a guy who has pitched at the top of rotations,” Breslow began, per Chris Cotillo of MassLive. “We’re really excited about adding a guy coming off back-to-back 200-strikeout seasons and shouldering a significant workload.”
And as to whether Gray slots in as the Red Sox’s No. 2, Breslow rightly said it’s too early to put labels on those sorts of things this early in the offseason (though that does leave the door open for the answer to be “yes,” which admittedly wouldn’t be a dream scenario).
“We still intend to improve our team. Exactly what that looks like, we don’t know right now,” Breslow concluded, per Cotillo.
Granted, Cotillo also reported earlier in the day that the Red Sox were in some capacity shifting their attention to acquiring an impact bat, but with two weeks to go before the winter meetings, ruling out a larger starting pitching acquisition is either overly pessimistic or downright naive.
If we get to the end of the offseason and Gray remains the biggest and/or most expensive name the Red Sox have brought in, folks should feel free to complain all they want. But this deal getting done before the winter meetings makes it feel more likely that he will wind up becoming at least the third-biggest.
And at the very least, folks need to acknowledge that a pitcher with 201 strikeouts in Gray is likely to be better than a pitcher with 121 in Giolito moving forward, regardless of a less-than-one-run difference in their ERAs.
More MLB: Red Sox-Cardinals Blockbuster Explained: Why Sonny Gray Was Ideal Boston Fit
