ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Yankees general manager Brian Cashman says Sonny Gray admitted he expressed a desire to play in New York at the behest of his agent so as not to harm his free-agency value and didn't voice his dislike of the Big Apple until after the 2018 trade deadline had passed.
Gray was acquired by Boston in a trade from St. Louis last month and spoke of his 1 1/2 seasons in New York during a Zoom news conference on Dec. 2.
“New York was, it just wasn’t a good situation for me, wasn’t a great setup for me and my family,” he said. “I never wanted to go there in the first place.”
His agent denied Cashman's allegations in an email to The Associated Press.
Gray was traded from Oakland to the Yankees in July 2017 and went 15-16 with a 4.52 ERA with New York. He was dropped from the rotation in August 2018 after he smirked when fans booed as he walked off the Yankee Stadium mound in the third inning of a 7-5 loss to Baltimore. He was dealt to Cincinnati in January 2019.
“After the deadline was over, he asked to meet with me. He said, 'Hey, can we talk?'” Cashman said Sunday night after arriving at the winter meetings.
Cashman recalled meeting with Gray in the clubhouse office of Chad Bohling, the Yankees' senior director of organizational performance.
“He said, 'I thought you were going to trade me,'” Cashman said. “I was like, publicly I’m out trying to get pitching, starting pitching and bullpen. Why would I trade a starter when we need pitching badly? ... And he goes, ‘Well I got to tell you, I’ve never wanted to —' that’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. This is the worst place. He just sits in his hotel room."
“I said, Well it’s a little late now,” Cashman recalled. “So then I told him, I said, but you said you wanted to be traded here. And he said, 'My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie. It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there are certain places that I don't want to go to.'”
“And I told him: Nothing I can do about it now. I wish you’d told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you that you never wanted to come here," Cashman said. "We tried to do our homework. … And I said so now we’ll just have to play the year out and this winter I’ll do whatever I can to move you and we moved him to the Reds.”
Cashman said the Yankees had a minor league video coordinator who had been roommates of Gray at Vanderbilt and that Gray had mentioned to his former roommate: "Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. Blah, blah, blah. Like I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship. Blah, blah, blah. So, and it wasn’t just him. He was communicating that to a number of different people that was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee."
McKinnis took issue with Cashman's comments.
“So Brian is trying to make people believe I told Sonny to, in Cashman’s words, `lie' to the minor league video guy to try to get Sonny to the Yankees, even though, per Cashman, Sonny did not want to be with the Yankees, to subsequently somehow help Sonny’s free agency,” McKinnis wrote in an email to the AP.
“This makes zero sense,” McKinnis added. “If any player does not want to play for a certain club — thus potentially not performing at their best if they were with that team — it does not help their career and future free agency to lie their way into a trade to that club. Brian’s claim makes no sense. Further, the words, `I want out of Oakland,' have never been said by Sonny. He loved his time with the A’s.”
Now 36, Gray has become a three-time All-Star and is 125-102 with a 3.58 ERA over 13 seasons with the Athletics (2013-17), Yankees (2017-18), Reds (2019-21), Minnesota (2022-23) and Cardinals (2024-25). The right-hander waived a no-trade provision to accept the deal to the Red Sox.
“What did factor into my decision to come to Boston is it feels good to me to go to a place now where you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees, right? It’s easy to go out and have that rivalry and go in it with full force, full steam ahead," Gray said. "I like the challenge. I appreciate the challenge. I accept the challenge. But this time around it's just go out and be yourself. Don't try to be anything other than yourself and if people don't like it, it is what it is. I am who I am, and I'm OK with that."
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FILE - St. Louis Cardinals' Sonny Gray pitches to a San Francisco Giants batter during the first inning of a baseball game, Sept. 24, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, file)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that Iran had requested a meeting with U.S. counterparts, though one of Iran's top negotiators said no further talks had been scheduled after attacks across the Persian Gulf over the weekend challenged negotiations to end the war.
The U.S. president has tried to preserve a fragile interim deal, but hostilities mounted in recent days in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil had been shipped before war began. After four days of trading strikes, both sides appeared to pause their attacks Monday.
Trump said on social media that a meeting with Iran would happen Tuesday in Doha, Qatar. Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, are flying to Qatar for the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
But Kazem Gharibabadi, a senior negotiator for Iran, denied any talks had been scheduled.
The U.S. and Iran agreed to an interim deal earlier this month that calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of enriched uranium. It also waives U.S.-backed sanctions on the country, opens the Strait of Hormuz and gives each side 60 days to hammer out broader agreements.
The Trump administration was operating Monday on the understanding that the U.S. and Iran are standing down after the recent back-and-forth strikes and that vessels can move freely through the Strait of Hormuz, said a U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
The U.S. official also said that Qatar planned to release $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets that would be used to purchase U.S. food products for the Iranian people.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had announced the expected release of funds earlier Monday in comments that appeared to be aimed at selling the Iranian public on the interim deal.
During the war that began Feb. 28, Iran’s attacks and threats stopped cargo ships and tankers from moving through the Strait of Hormuz, creating a global energy crisis.
In recent days, Iran has twice attacked vessels in the strait — including a tanker filled with Qatari crude — following efforts to open Oman’s territorial waters to both inbound and outbound traffic from the Persian Gulf.
The attacks drew retaliatory American airstrikes and raised concerns that negotiations to reach a formal end to the war could be disrupted. Iran launched drone and missile attacks targeting Bahrain and Kuwait on Sunday.
The strait has long been considered an international waterway despite its location in Iran and Oman’s territorial waters.
Pezeshkian offered praise for the interim deal in comments published Monday by the state-run IRNA news agency, calling it “a great victory for the Iranian people.”
“Based on the plans made, $6 billion out of the total $12 billion of Iranian resources in Qatar will be released and returned to the country, and necessary follow-ups are being carried out,” he said. He did not elaborate.
Pezeshkian, a reformist within Iran's theocracy, is the highest-ranking official within Iran to reference the release of the funds held by Qatar, a key mediator along with Pakistan in the negotiations.
Pakistan, a key mediator, has said talks between Iran and the U.S. would resume Tuesday.
Gharibabadi, the Iranian negotiator, cast doubt on the meeting in comments published by IRNA.
“Reports by some media about technical talks by the working groups being held in Doha are not confirmed,” he said.
Technical talks involve lower-level diplomats working on the specifics of any deal that would draw top leaders from Iran and the U.S. back to the table.
Oman's foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, said Monday that Oman and Iran are considering charging service-related fees for commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Albusaidi said services could include water safety measures, pollution prevention, navigational assistance and preparedness for incidents such as fires. He told Radio Monte Carlo while visiting France that there are “successful examples” of similar services being provided in compliance with maritime law.
Albusaidi said Oman does not support imposing transit fees on ships.
“This is internationally forbidden," he said, "and we are abiding by these rules."
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that Lebanon is determined to deploy troops along its entire southern border as part of a framework agreement with Israel signed Friday. He made the remark while meeting with Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East.
The deal was rejected by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which triggered the latest war with Israel on March 2 when it fired rockets across Lebanon's southern border and into northern Israel.
The Israel-Lebanon deal calls for Hezbollah to be disarmed before Israel will withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon. Israel agreed to withdraw initially from a couple of “pilot zones” where the Lebanese army would then deploy, but no details have been shared about how that will work in practice.
Hezbollah officials have warned that attempts to implement the plan could lead to civil war.
Boak reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Bassem Mroue and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.
Women talk in front of a banner with graphic depicting the slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei kissing head of the late commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, as they wait for the green light to cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, June 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
