ST. LOUIS -- Sonny Gray, who has a long history of changing uniforms midgame to try and mix up his vibes on the mound, started Monday’s game wearing a red, long-sleeved shirt under his Cardinals jersey, while also sporting short pants with his striped socks stretching to his knees.
Following a laborious, 20-pitch first inning that required Gray to pitch around a hit and two walks, he made the change of shedding the red undershirt by the start of the second inning. What didn’t change, however, was Gray’s tough luck in keeping the ball in the ballpark over an up-and-down second half of the season.
Gray allowed three long balls in the Cardinals’ 11-3 loss to the Athletics on Monday at Busch Stadium, upping his second-half total of homers allowed to 13. His season total is now at 23, a career worst.
After allowing 10 homers over his first 108 innings of the season, Gray has surrendered 13 long balls in just 50 1/3 innings since the All-Star Game. It is the second straight season that Gray, who will be 36 years old by Opening Day in 2026, has allowed 13 home runs in the second half.
“This is one of those [starts] that hurts more than normal because I felt really good and my stuff was coming out good,” said Gray, who has a 4.43 ERA after allowing seven earned runs on 10 hits over six-plus innings. “But I felt good. This is one of those that leaves you -- not baffled because you know what happened -- but frustrated because you did feel like you had decent stuff and couldn’t do anything with it.”
Despite the long-ball troubles, Gray had pitched well for the most part in August, a month that tends to give him trouble because of the soaring summer temperatures in St. Louis. Aside from an uncharacteristic six-run outing against the Yankees on Aug. 16, Gray posted a 2.08 ERA in four other August outings.
Also, despite how Gray has been unable to pitch around his long-ball woes of late, St. Louis is still 19-9 in games started by Gray, but just 49-62 in all other games this season.
Monday’s contest, however, is one that the veteran right-hander hopes to put behind himself as soon as possible. It’s not just one pitch that hitters have feasted on as Gray has allowed five homers on his four-seam fastball, five on his sweeper, seven on his sinker, three on curveballs, two on changeups and one on a cutter, per Baseball Savant.
The lopsided loss was the sixth time this season that Gray has surrendered multiple home runs in a game -- and the fourth instance since the All-Star break.
“Stay out of the middle of the plate, and I definitely didn’t do that, and I definitely stayed across the middle early in counts and they didn’t miss,” Gray said. “So, stay out of the middle of the plate and mix your [sequences]. I mixed my hands just fine, but maybe too many strikes in the middle of the plate early.”
Gray had difficulty in the first inning with a hit and two walks, but he got out of it unscathed by getting Colby Thomas to fly out to deep center. He twirled three scoreless innings to start before encountering trouble again in the fourth inning. JJ Bleday hit the first pitch he saw -- a curveball that popped up out of Gray’s hand -- for a 381-foot two-run home run. A batter later, Zack Gelof hit a four-seam fastball that was off the plate over the wall in right and Gray and the Cardinals were in a 3-0 hole.
Gray worked a scoreless fifth inning, but the game got away from him in the sixth and an abbreviated seventh inning. After the first two batters of the sixth reached on a double and a single, Bleday once again hit the first pitch he saw from Gray for a tape-measure home run. Bleday, a product of Vanderbilt University just like Gray, drilled his second homer 428 feet -- his longest home run of the season, per Statcast.
“You look at not just Sonny, but our staff in general, and we don’t have a ton of swing and miss in zone,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “You’re facing a team that is the most aggressive team as far as swing rate [on] 0-0 [counts] and they’ve got some guys with some pretty good power.
“Not letting Sonny get to two strikes is a good game plan, and these guys did exactly that. [Gray] got ahead of 27 out of 30 [batters] and usually that’s a good thing, but this team did a nice job of making him pay for it.”