JUPITER, Fla. — Sonny Gray has a “mild” hamstring injury that puts his scheduled opening day start for the Cardinals in question, the team said Tuesday.
Gray had to come out of his start on Monday against the Nationals in West Palm Beach after feeling the injury on his last pitch.
An MRI on Monday night showed the injury was “mild” according to John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations, but he cautioned the team won’t know more about how long Gray could be sidelined for several days.
“I’m not going to put any return to play yet on it,” Mozeliak said. “We’re going to see how he responds the next few days. From the MRI reading we are definitely encouraged. Fingers crossed this isn’t going to be something that lingers too long.
“It’s unfortunate but it certainly could have been worse.”
Gray, signed by the Cardinals as a free agent over the winter, had been set to be their opening day starter on March 28 in Los Angeles.
“This is something that is going to slow him down but we don’t think it’s going to go deep into the season by any means,” Mozeliak said. “I would imagine that (opening day) is in question but obviously we are going to give it some time … It probably would be challenging at this point.”
Gray was making his second start of the spring and came out of the game after throwing only 20 pitches, recording five outs. He had been scheduled to work three innings.
In 2022, when Gray was pitching for the Minnesota Twins, he missed about a month of the season because of a hamstring injury. He told the Cardinals this injury did not appear to be as serious.
“This (Gray) is a guy who is a competitor, we have a ton of competitors in that clubhouse and this is our first test,” said manager Oli Marmol. “It’s unfortunate but the guys are going to respond the way they need to respond. This is a guy who is a leader the way he goes about his business. He’s a vocal leader and he’s going to continue to do those things as he prepares to pitch for us again.”
In Gray’s absence, the Cardinals will need to prepare another starter to potentially take the opening day assignment but Marmol said it was too early to speculate about who will get that assignment.
“There’s a lot going on on opening day, it’s different than any other start,” Marmol said. “We have guys that will handle that just fine. We’ll see how Sonny is responding and we’ll go from there.
“It’s part of the game. He’s optimistic about it, we’re optimistic about it and we’ll keep moving forward. We understand it’s mild, which is a good thing, could have been a lot worse, but we will have a better sense over the next couple of days of how he is responding to everything.”
The Cardinals already had been using Zack Thompson and Matthew Liberatore as starters this spring, with the idea that one of them might be used as a sixth starter during the opening week of the season, when the team will play eight games without a day off.
Mozeliak said he did not believe Gray’s injury will prompt the Cardinals to look for another starter from outside the organization.
“I definitely feel it’s not something that’s required at this point,” he said“ “Obviously if something changes then we’d have to look at it different but not thinking we’re going to have to do that at this point.”
Follow Rob Rains on Twitter @RobRains
