Red Sox News & Links: Vets express frustration of management in wake of playoff exit

First and most notably there was Sonny Gray , who didn't mince words when it came to his thoughts about being lifted after having thrown just 70 pitches in an elimination game. "I think I'm the best pitcher in the American League going through the order a third time. I think that's a fact," Gray said. "I would have liked to have been trusted in that moment." (ESPN)

Making matters worse, Chad Tracy's decision to lift Gray in favor of Erik Miller seems to have soured the pending free agent on the organization as a whole. Gray was asked a variation on a question that every veteran has been asked dozens of times throughout their career: "Are the Red Sox a destination you'd want to return to?" It's a softball question that, 99 times out of 100, would be answered with pablum about enjoying his time here and wanting to explore his options, and doing what's best for his family, yadda, yadda, yadda. But in the heat of the moment, Gray offered something else:

Earlier this season, in the midst of one of the hottest stretches in baseball history, Willson Contreras made it clear that he wanted to finish his career in Boston, saying that he had "found my family." But in the clubhouse last night he didn't hold back in criticizing the organization's decision-making "It's not enough when you have talent, or you have data, or you have computers telling you what to do, because this is baseball," he said. "The data is here to help us, but at the end of the day, you're going to need experience and veteran guys to win games. There's a lot of stuff that I would like to say, but I'll stay (with) that." Asked further about accounted for the Sox' swing from mid-summer brilliance to fall failure, Contreras demurred in eyebrow-raising fashion: "I'm not going to answer it because I don't want to give my honest answer." (Justin Leger, NBC Sports)