ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Sonny Gray knew he wanted to be a St. Louis Cardinals early on in the free agent process.
"Going into this (free agent process), I wanted to be a Cardinal and that started probably a little over a year ago," said Gray. "It's a place where every time I come as a visitor and I looked at the stadium and I'm like 'Wow this place is incredible.'"
Gray's fondness of St. Louis caps off what felt like an inevitable marriage between the Cardinals and Gray as the team officially announced the signing of Gray Monday evening to a reportedly three-year deal worth $75 million and includes a fourth-year option that could raise the deal to a total of $100 million.
After a disastrous season where the team missed the playoffs by a wide margin and achieved only their second losing season since Y2K, expectations on the team to improve a pitching staff that was disastrous was never higher.
The Cardinals, to their credit, knew they had to go get three starters to improve a rotation whose 5.12 ERA was the fourth-worst in baseball, and they did that.
First, they signed Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson, both who might not be the flashiest of signings, but both have ties to St. Louis and wanted to be Cardinals, while also being able to rack up innings. Both pitchers pitched a combined 375.2 innings. Last season for the Cardinals, it took six starters to even reach close to that number combined.
While Lynn and Gibson both could rack up innings, the team still needed more of an edge to the rotation and they did that with Gray, who had a career-year at age-33 for the Minnesota Twins, pitching a 2.79 ERA and posting a 2.79 ERA, American League-leading 2.83 FIP, striking out 183 batters and allowing only eight home runs in 184 innings.
Gray’s performance earned him votes to be runner-up in the 2023 AL Cy Young voting process.
Gray said he believes bringing him, Gibson, and Lynn will bring more of an edge to the Cardinals rotation that they were missing all last year.
"If you want to talk about someone who takes the ball and has an edge, you'll see it." said Gray.
Gray knows coming into St. Louis right now will a tougher challenge than usual. But he believes the culture is still strong that they can turn it around when he appeared on MLB Network's Hot Stove Tuesday.
"Everyone knows about St. Louis, the Cardinals and the culture... all those things were very important to us throughout this process," said Gray. "It's a place we definitely had in the target of our minds."
The moves seem to have the seal of approval from Adam Wainwright, when he gave his thoughts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"These signings are awesome for the Cardinals," Wainwright wrote on X, "Every winning team has a great mix of young and veteran players. I know all of these guys well. They’re winning players, and great additions inside the clubhouse also. Great stuff happening in the Lou right now."