The move everyone expected to see Monday finally came down less than an hour before the trade deadline.
Yes, Sonny Gray is a Yankee. And any time a player of his stature puts on pinstripes, his star automatically rises.
But will his actual production?
Gray's Fantasy owners may not be celebrating today. They know Yankee Stadium's relationship with the long ball, and home runs are without question bad for starting pitchers.
Beyond that, a lack of home runs has helped fuel Gray's turnaround this year. His rate of 0.7 per nine innings would rank among the five best in baseball if he had the innings to qualify, and given O.co Coliseum's reputation as a pitcher's park, his home venue would seem to have something to do with it. Just look at the splits:
So is he doomed with this move? Well, it's never that simple. For one thing, his home-away splits are much closer to even for his career -- and for good reason. He is and always has been one of the majors' more extreme ground-ball pitchers. His ground-ball percentage this year would rank fourth among qualifiers, and the positioning of the fences doesn't matter so much if they're so rarely coming into play.
But it's one thing to theorize about it. It's quite another to see it, which, thanks to Statcast and Baseball Savant, we can actually do:
That's where every batted ball off Sonny Gray this year would have landed at Yankee Stadium, assuming similar atmospheric conditions. It looks like possibly three more home runs than he has actually given up -- all thanks to the short porch in right field -- and again, that's assuming he played every game at Yankee Stadium, which he won't do even as a Yankee.
You know what's a bigger deal to me than (hypothetically) three additional home runs over half a season's time? The support he'll get with the Yankees, both in terms of runs (they average 5.3 per game compared to the Athletics' 4.3) and bullpen (they have five closer-capable relievers following last week's trade with the White Sox while the Athletics have struggled to find even one). In other words, Gray has a much better chance of being a big winner for the Yankees -- and without sacrificing his ERA.
You know what else will keep the ERA in line? Part of the explanation for Sonny Gray's disastrous 2016 was poor mechanics, but part of it was what became of his ground-ball tendencies with the worst defense in baseball backing him. That's how FanGraphs rated the 2016 Athletics, and the 2017 Athletics are dead last as well.
The 2017 Yankees? They're middle of the pack.
So it's a defensive upgrade, an offensive upgrade and a bullpen upgrade to go along with a park downgrade ... for a pitcher mostly unaffected by a venue change. Yeah, I'm thinking Sonny Gray will be A-OK.
The bigger question is if the Athletics will. As a cost-controlled ace in an era when pitching is scarce, Sonny Gray presented them with a chance to restock their farm system, and they said they weren't going to settle. But acquiring two prospects -- James Kaprielian (Tommy John surgery) and Dustin Fowler (ruptured patella tendon) coming off potentially career-altering injuries -- and a third, Jorge Mateo, who clashed with Yankees management before slumping to a .258 batting average and .756 OPS this year sounds exactly like settling.
All three have value in long-term keeper leagues, but none are contributing this year. And each has seen his stock drop over the past few months.
