KEEP IT REAL OR KEEP IT TO YOURSELF

Sonny Gray clearly never learned the lesson, “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” especially when it comes to your old team. After getting banished to the bullpen, Gray’s relationship with the Yankees definitely went south. Now with the Reds, Gray decided to talk some smack.

Source: The Daily News

"They love sliders," he said of the Yankees. "Sliders are a great pitch. The numbers say slider is a good pitch, but you might not realize how many (s----y) counts you're getting in while throwing all those sliders. They wanted me to be Tanaka and I'm way different from him,"reported CBS Sports.

Even though Gray thinks that the Yankees had him throwing the “wrong” breaking pitch, the pitching data in the CBS article disagrees.  He also said, “In my very last outing against the Red Sox, second to last game of the season in New York, I threw two innings out of the pen, all I did was throw cutters," Gray said. "I said, 'F--- 'em, all I'm going to do is throw cutters today.'” 

Source: NBC Sports

Which also is not true, and the data say that he did not throw a single cutter. If you’re going to go out and bash your former team, maybe you should have your facts straight. Keep it real, or keep it to yourself, Sonny.

Perhaps, Sonny should take a page from Noah Syndergaard’s book and learn to keep it real on social media and the press. Following his shaky second appearance at Spring Training, rather than blame his team, Syndergaard remained positive.

“I always think it’s great to struggle,’’ Syndergaard said following his second outing of the spring. “It separates the men from boys in how you react and how you make adjustments during a game. You recognize you don’t have your best stuff and you have to really pitch.’’Syndergaard isn’t at all worried about the upcoming season and said, “There’s a lot of time to work,” in the next four weeks, reported the New York Post.

Syndergaard also isn’t afraid to poke a little fun every once in awhile. Following Bryce Harper’s, “back to D.C.,” blunder, Syndergaard posted a photo on Instagram with the caption, “We want to bring home a title to DC... Oops... I mean Queens!” Gotta love good ole’ Thor.

Authenticity is truly a precious commodity in baseball and in life.  Transparency is equally important. Keep it real or keep it to yourself...don't blame, just accept, move on and make it work and even better, make it better.  

--Missy O'Rourke
BYB Contributor
Twitter: @missy_orourke