Yankees second-half has arrived; who steps up?

Sonny Gray

After pitching well his first season in pinstripes, Sonny Gray’s career has taken a turn for the worse. Batters no longer fear the Tennessee native. Instead, many hitters are excited to face Gray.

Sporting a 5.34 ERA in 19 games, Gray is just seven earned runs shy of marking his season total from last year (both with the Oakland Athletics and Yankees).

But Gray has been pretty consistent each season. His velocity has remained the same, his strikeout and walk rates are both stable and his left on base percentage hasn’t wavered.

They only relatively noticeable change in his statistics are his batted ball data, which shows that he’s given up more line drives and fly balls with fewer ground balls.

So whether that be the cause of Gray’s 2018 hiccup or not, the Yankees could use an arm like his back on the right track.

The good news is that Gray has back-to-back wins in his last two outings, the first coming in a 9-0 win against the Baltimore Orioles in which he struck out eight — and the latter performance recently coming against the Mets when Gray allowed two earned runs in 5.1 innings.

So while Gray’s first half was a bit rough, as seen through his spotty performances, he does have some ability to pitch deep into games, strike out a few batters and limit runs.