What Sonny Gray changed to spark best outing with Yankees

Gray was better than he’s ever been as a Yankee on Sunday in Kansas City.

KANSAS CITY — Sonny Gray had extra time to think about his latest rough outing, a May 11 loss that probably stung a little more than the others because it was to the Oakland Athletics, the club that traded him to the Yankees last July. 

Gray had made some progress from a terrible start to 2018 over a couple outings, then seemingly killed the momentum with that five-run, five-inning outing at Yankee Stadium.

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And then two Yankees off days and a rainout last week led to seven days between that bad start against the A’s and his next one Sunday afternoon against the Kansas City Royals.

“Having an extended time off, you’re never sure how sharp they’ll be when they come out,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone admitted.

It was obvious right away that Gray was on.

His first inning, a 1-2-3 on 12 pitches, was one of his best of the season, then Gray went on to same thing in the second, third and fourth … all 1-2-3s with few pitches.

This 12 up and 12 down resembled the Sonny Gray that was a 14-game winner, an All-Star and pitched to a 2.73 ERA in 2015, not the one who mostly has been fair to poor as a Yankee. The rest of Gray’s afternoon was pretty impressive, too, as he pitched through the eighth allowing just one run on four hits in a 10-1 Yankees win.

How did Gray pull this off?

Austin Romine, Gray’s personal catcher, was the first to let the cat out of bag in his post-game interview.

“He worked on some stuff in his windup,” Romine said.

The extra days between starts for Gray provided time to do some tweaking, then practice his changes and they worked like a charm.

Asked what specifically changed, Gray shot back, “It was the rhythm. Just stay on top of the rubber and pitch.”

To do that, Gray put his trust in Romine by throwing whatever was called all day long, and this formula led to an early perfect-game bid and then him settling for his best outing as a Yankee by a lot.

“I made sure I had the sign ready for him when he got on the mound and looked at me,” Romine said. “No wasted movement. Get on the mound and execute.

“It was pitch, mound, sign, go, and he just kept repeating it. He got into a rhythm and he stayed in it and kept making pitches.”

If it sounds like a simple change that a Little Leaguer could make, it is. Of course, turning that change into success can’t happen though if Gray didn’t also have all of his pitches working and command them all.

“His stuff was great,” manager Aaron Boone said. “His slider I thought was a really good pitch for him. He was on the attack all day.”

“It was nice to see the bounce-back (outing),” Romine added. “Having two good ones, then one off and going back and doing that … it shows you that he’s figuring it out and he’s getting the timing. The pitches are there, the movement’s there.”

Gray didn’t allow a hit until Hunter Dozier dropped a bloop single to center with two outs in the Royals fifth and he was working on a shutout until Jon Jay hit a two-out RBI single in the eighth to make it an 8-1 game.

“When we’d get into counts 2-2 and 3-2, he was attacking guys and relying on his movement,” Romine said. “He wasn’t trying to make his stuff too nasty and he was getting some groundballs.”

Gray got 11 groundball outs, two of them coming on a double play, before leaving with his pitch count at 92. His only bad inning was the eighth when KC scored its only run on a leadoff single, two-out walk and a hit.

“I felt like he emptied the tank,” Boone said. “I felt like even on his outs (in the eighth), I thought he lost his command and maybe was a little bit overthrowing. If he had a clean inning there, he would have had an opportunity to go out and finish. But all and all, what a great effort.”

Sure was, and best of all for the Yankees, this gives them hope that Gray’s outing is a sign that he’ll start consistently pitching as he did when he was going well for Oakland.

In eight starts, Gray’s 3-3 with an ERA that still is high at 5.48, but it’s 4.08 over his last five starts, all of them with Romine doing the catching.

“Success is a beautiful thing, especially when you’ve had some ups and downs,” Boone said. “But going through adversity is not the worst thing, especially when you’re Sonny Gray and you’ve got the equipment to get out of it, which he clearly does.

“The stuff’s elite. That’s why we were so optimistic about him even when he was going through some struggles there. When you struggle a little bit, it allows you to tweak with some things and learn more about yourself, and the adjustments that he’s made allowed him to really go out there and dominate.”

Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RandyJMiller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.