Barber: Asparagus Night in minor leagues the latest detour for rehabbing A's phenom Sonny Gray

STOCKTON

Down Fremont Street, past the transmission shops and the upholsterers and Green Frog Liquor, a major league star took the mound.

The A’s Sonny Gray - former first-round draft choice, 2015 American League All-Star - started for the Stockton Ports on Saturday at Banner Island Ballpark, a stadium with free parking and a capacity of 5,300. It was Asparagus Night for the Ports, Oakland’s Single-A affiliate. The team wore special jerseys that looked to be adorned with green pinstripes, except the stripes were actually long, skinny spears of asparagus.

It was the first game action of the 2017 season for Gray, and the first Single-A appearance of his lifetime. He pitched one game in the A’s Arizona rookie league in 2011, when he was 21. Other than that, he’s always competed at Double-A or higher.

Asparagus Night probably hasn’t figured prominently in Gray’s dreams, but injury rehab assignments take you to strange places. His latest comeback began with a “controlled game” at A’s extended spring training five days earlier, and may well include one more minor-league tune-up before Gray rejoins the A’s.

For the record, he looked great against the San Jose Giants.

Gray was scheduled to throw four innings or 65 pitches, whichever came first. But he cruised through his four frames with such efficiency that A’s pitching coach Curt Young, who was in attendance along with bullpen coach Scott Emerson and hitting coach Darren Bush, offered his blessing for a fifth inning.

Gray wound up throwing 47 pitches. He finished with six strikeouts, allowing just one baserunner on a third-inning single, before warming down with a 13-pitch bullpen session. He threw all his pitches effectively. Yes, he was mostly pitching against players who will never set foot on an MLB field. But after the game, standing in the Ports clubhouse, Gray seemed happy just to be competing again.

“The best thing for me to take away is it feels good to feel good again out there,” he said. “I really don’t feel any issues going on with my elbow, with my lat, anything. So now it’s just getting my work in, getting out there and competing. And that’s what’s exciting to me, is feeling healthy and feeling like I can do what I want with the baseball.”

Gray isn’t the only pitcher to begin the season on the disabled list, but his case is particularly worrisome because of what happened to him in 2016. Coming of his best year as a pro (14-7 record, 2.73 ERA, third in AL Cy Young voting), he spent two separate stints on the DL with a strained right trapezius (the long muscle that connects the neck, shoulder and mid-back) and later a strained forearm.

Excluding a couple of brief stretches of Sonny days, Gray looked like an imposter last year. He went 5-11 and his ERA ballooned to 5.69. He yielded 18 home runs and 15 wild pitches, both career highs, in just 117 innings.

So when Gray felt a twinge in his right latissimus dorsi muscle, which wraps the side and middle of the back (read about Gray these days are you’re going to learn some anatomy), in his second spring outing, and when that twinge turned into lingering problem that knocked him off the mound for more than a month and a half, it wasn’t just a pitcher getting hurt. It felt ominous.

“I mean, it’s a tough game and it’ll test you a lot,” Gray said. “Going through the injuries last year and feeling good coming into the spring, with little lingering things, and to get knocked out my second start in spring, it’s frustrating.”

Gray has always been on the MLB fast track. Now he is being force-fed lessons in patience.

“It’s always difficult when there’s something you love to do, and something you’ve done your whole life, when that kind of gets taken away from you a little bit,” Gray said. “It makes you want to get back out there. You watch a lot of baseball. I’ve watched a lot of baseball this last year.”

Gray is crucial to the A’s short-term future. The team’s young starting pitchers have been outstanding so far this season, the driving force behind Oakland’s five-game win streak. The staff exudes promise. But the guy who replaced Gray as the rotation’s No. 1 starter, Kendall Graveman, is on the 10-day DL with a strained shoulder. And the other four who have filled out the rotation in Gray’s absence - Sean Manaea, Jharel Cotton, Andrew Triggs and Jesse Hahn - are pups. Among the four, only Manaea has ever logged an MLB season of 100 innings or more; he pitched 144? as a rookie last year.

Gray is just 27 himself, but the A’s desperately need his experience to make a run in 2017. Not long ago, he figured as their long-term cornerstone. Now he’s their biggest question mark.

Gray is small as MLB pitchers go, listed at 5-foot-10, 190 pounds. Pitchers fitting that description are frequently viewed with skepticism. Can they hold up through the rigors of a 32-start season? Lately, Gray has not. He’s trying to remain optimistic.

“There’s some things in this game that you can’t really control,” Gray said. “And looking back on this lat injury, we went over it a hundred times and sometimes there’s just not an answer.”

In Oakland, a serially injured pitcher conjures the image of Rich Harden, a dazzling thrower who won at a .608 clip over nine years in the big leagues, but just once topped 150 innings in a season as he was body betrayed him in countless ways.

Gray insisted he has no interest in proving he’s not injury-prone.

“That doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I’m gonna get back and compete. I could care less what other people say.”

Anyway, his actions will determine public opinion. If he gets back to pre-2016 Sonny Gray, people will say they never doubted him for a minute. If the injuries keep coming, people will say, man, what a shame. Sonny Gray could have had a hell of a career.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.