RADIO
After finishing third in AL Cy Young voting last season, Sonny Gray is starting to look like the weapon the A’s hoped for when drafting him in 2011. With a 2.73 ERA, a 1.08 WHIP and a 169/59 K/BB ration spread across 208 innings in the 2015 season, some fantasy owners are in agreement. Others are still skeptical, and for good reason.
The main question mark surrounding Sonny Gray is his odd habit of getting batters to pull ground balls, one of the most unsuccessful offensive plays in baseball. Fangraphs tells us that batters pulled 25.7% of ground balls against Gray contributing to quite an inflated BABIP, which he currently ranks fifth in the league since his career began. If those ground balls start traveling in other directions, Gray may be in trouble.
There is no reason to expect that Sonny Gray cannot build on last season’s success, but there are surely some underlying red flags that detract value.
