Few players have embodied the Boston Red Sox’s midseason turnaround as much as Sonny Gray. The franchise looked destined to become sellers at the trade deadline just a month ago, but then came a 15-game winning streak that matched the franchise record set eight decades ago and brought them back right into the playoff race. After playing a key role in that resurgence, the veteran righty endured one of his roughest outings of the season. The result? Sheer frustration.

“It was just a bad combination of me being bull*** and them having that approach. They’re a contact-oriented team. And it happened like that,” Chris Cotillo quoted Gray in his X post. 

The 36-year-old did well to restrict the Toronto Blue Jays from scoring in the first two innings, but the third one flipped the game on its head as the starter allowed 5 runs. He was able to retire the first two batters, but a double from Nathan Lukes extended the inning.

Then Vladimir Guerrero Jr recorded a single while Lukes reached home. George Springer crushed a homer off his 79-mph curveball with Vladdy and Kazuma Okamoto on the bases. Daulton Varsho and Ernie Clement added to the damage, making it 5-0 before Gray could wrap the inning. 

He was pulled after the fifth, and Alec Gamboa came in to close the game, allowing 1 run and 3 hits by the top of the 9th inning. The Red Sox finally lost the game 6-0, and Toronto leveled the series. 

“I think that’s a little bit of the frustrating part is that I got to two strikes very, very well. Once I got to two strikes, that was the issue,” Gray added.

“The righties were diving, hooking, looking for spin and hooking down the line…me not executing my two-strike pitches and throwing them in the zone, it’s a bad combination.”

The batters anticipated Gray’s signature breaking stuff and tried to turn on it. They stayed inside the zone, dived over the plate to pull horizontal breaking balls, and hooked fair balls down the left-field line. Those hard contacts created the combined damage.

But the pitcher’s rough outing wasn’t the only concern for the Red Sox. Their entire lineup was unable to put anything on the scoreboard.

Dylan Cease authored a complete-game, one-hit shutout. The Red Sox had won the series opener 6-4, but they never looked like a threat to the Blue Jays on Saturday. 

Sonny Gray entered the game with 9 straight quality starts and a 12-1 record. But now, with the trade deadline just a week away, his disappointing night adds another layer to the Red Sox’s evaluation. 

Would one setback change the Boston Red Sox’s deadline outlook?

Analysts and fans alike expected the Red Sox to go on a fire sale during this window, but that was a month ago when they were at the bottom of the AL East with a 31-45 record. They scripted an incredible turnaround in the last few weeks to make it to the middle of the division with an over .500 PCT, and it completely changed the trade outlook. 

Craig Breslow, however, wasn’t ready to disclose his trade strategies a few days ago. Instead, he emphasized waiting for more input and making well-informed decisions for the team. 

“We’ve put ourselves in a good position, and that’s going to be very influential in how we approach the deadline,” he noted.

“The reason that we say we want to give ourselves as much time as possible to see who we are and to watch our identity emerge is because we believe that it can change, and it can change really quickly.”

The Red Sox’s hot streak halted after their 5-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the rubber game on Wednesday.

Now, Boston has dropped 2 of its last 3 games. Saturday’s shutout loss provided another piece of information Breslow needed before making a decision. With the coming week representing his final opportunity, the chief baseball officer must now decide.

Currently, the Yankees’ arch-rivals are 53-50 and are firmly in a position to make it to the playoffs via the Wild Card (+0.5 games). And despite the recent “bad combination,” the Red Sox will surely need Sonny Gray’s skills and expertise if they eventually make it to the postseason.