Sonny Gray carved up the Yankees on Saturday night. He took a no-hitter into the eighth inning. But the truly wild part came later, after the stat geeks crunched the numbers.
Gray became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1900) to reach 2,000 career strikeouts and 2,000.0 innings pitched in the same game. OptaSTATS dropped that fact on social media, and it’s the kind of milestone that sounds made up. It’s not.
The right-hander punched out Spencer Jones in the eighth for strikeout No. 2,000. He finished with nine Ks total. He fanned Jazz Chisholm twice and Jones twice before Amed Rosario finally broke up the no-hit bid with a single. Manager Chad Tracy pulled Gray to a standing ovation at Fenway.
But the Yankees didn’t go quietly. They scraped two runs across in the ninth to force extras. Jarren Duran ended it with a walk-off RBI single in the 10th. Boston won 5-4.
Gray’s weird place in Yankees history
MLB analytics researcher Sarah Langs pointed out that Gray is the first former Yankees pitcher to take a no-hit bid of at least seven innings against the Yankees since Ralph Terry did it in 1957. Terry eventually went back to New York. Nobody’s expecting Gray to do the same.
Gray pitched for the Yankees from 2017 to 2018. It didn’t go great. He posted a 4.51 ERA in pinstripes and never looked comfortable. Now he’s in Boston, thriving, and the crowd let him hear it as he walked off the mound. That doesn’t happen by accident.
The Red Sox needed this. They’d been scuffling against the Yankees lately, and Gray gave them a starter who made New York look helpless for seven innings. The bullpen nearly coughed it up, but the win counts the same.
Gray’s line: 7.2 innings, one hit, no earned runs, nine strikeouts, one walk. He threw 101 pitches. The no-hitter didn’t hold, but the history did. And he’s got the ball to prove it.
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