Sonny Gray takes the mound in Toronto Monday night chasing a 15th win that would tie him for the MLB lead. Gray, with 14 wins, already leads the American League by a wide margin. Nick Martinez of the Tampa Bay Rays is second with 11.
Cristopher Sánchez of the Philadelphia Phillies leads the majors with 15 wins but Gray would equal that mark if he is credited with a win in Toronto.
A win would also mark a career high for the 36-year-old right-hander, who has never topped 14 victories in thirteen previous major league seasons.
Gray has reached the 14-win mark in 21 starts, compiling a 2.78 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP and 106 strikeouts against just 32 walks, numbers that read like a peak-career vintage from a pitcher three years past his last All-Star nod.
Toronto counters with right-hander Jameson Taillon, who enters the night 2-6 with a 5.96 ERA. The matchup favors Boston on paper, but Gray has stumbled against the Blue Jays before. He took his only loss since early May against Toronto on July 25, allowing five runs on 10 hits over five innings.
Sonny Gray’s Push For a Career-High Season
Gray’s 14th win came Wednesday against the Chicago White Sox, a six-inning, three-hit outing that pushed Boston to a seventh consecutive victory at Fenway Park.
Gray was locked in from his first pitch.
“I thought he was awesome. Very, very locked in and determined,” interim manager Chad Tracy said. “He executed his pitches, had his spin pretty much whenever he wanted to. It looked like vintage Sonny.”
Gray offered a simpler explanation for the turnaround.
“I just felt like I was, you know, a little closer to just being myself, and that’s a good feeling,” he said, as quoted by The Associated Press, describing the fix that followed a stretch in which he’d allowed nine runs across his previous two turns.
With Garrett Crochet sidelined since late April with a shoulder issue, Gray has effectively carried a rotation that also leans on rookies Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett, according to Ian Browne of MLB.com. He reached 2,000 career strikeouts in June against the Yankees, carrying a no-hit bid into the eighth inning that night before settling for a no-decision.
The Rarity of a Modern 20-Win Season
Fifteen wins means more now than it did a generation ago. Spencer Strider’s 20-5 mark for Atlanta in 2023 remains the last 20-win season in the majors, with nobody reaching the mark in either league over the two full seasons since.
Before Strider, Kyle Wright won 21 games for the Braves in 2022, and the two seasons marked Atlanta’s first back-to-back 20-game winners since 1998. That scarcity traces to five-man rotations, stricter pitch counts and bullpen specialization that have all but eliminated the workloads pitchers once carried decade after decade.
Boston enters the night off back-to-back losses that snapped a nine-game winning streak, sitting at 64-53 and holding the second AL wild-card spot behind the New York Yankees, with the division-leading Tampa Bay Rays still within reach. A 15th win from Gray would steady the rotation, extend the best season of his career, and continue the 36-year-old on his way to a potential 20-win season. If he reaches that ,ark, Gray wold be the first Red Sox pitcher to get there since Rick Porcello, who won 22 games in 2016.
Red Sox Sonny Gray Goes For Major Milestone Against Blue Jays Tonight