With less than one month until the trade deadline, the silly season of rumors are starting to swirl and while some of those “extrapolations” are purely for the views, this report by Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic hypothesizes that if the Boston Red Sox decide to sell, starting pitcher Sonny Gray would be an “intriguing match” for the Atlanta Braves.
Gray, who is now 36, has seemingly been an omnipresent player in trade or free agency wishes for a large contingent of Braves fans for years given that he lives in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University. But, for whatever reasons, the pairing has yet to occur.
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Rosenthal and Sammon reason that a match of Gray and the Braves is viable because Gray holds a full no-trade clause which could limit Boston’s options if – and this a big if – they decide to sell. Another favorable line-item for a Gray deal is that he would be owed approximately $6M should he be trade since Grays previous employer, the St. Louis Cardinals, are covering half of his salary this season.
The important context of their report is that this was sourced information, as noted below.
The Atlanta Braves are one of several rotation-needy teams expressing interest in Boston Red Sox starter Sonny Gray, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak freely on the topic.
The Athletic’s duo do float the plausibility that Atlanta could make a play for Tarik Skubal, the pending free agent starter of the Detroit Tigers, but that isn’t based on intel.
In the same report, they double-down on their prior reporting that the Kansas City Royals are not going to trade starting pitchers Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo. If the Royals, despite their record, hold on to those two pitchers – the starting pitching market will be reduced significantly for all buyers.
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For early June, this is a notable rumor, but take this with a grain of salt. A big grain of salt.
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