📌 Join the BPCrew Chapter in your city and meet up with more Yankees fans! 👉 CLICK HERE
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 06: Starlin Castro #14 and Didi Gregorius #18 of the New York Yankees high fives teammates after they defeated the Boston Red Sox 3-2 during a game at Yankee Stadium on May 6, 2016 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images)

Joey Gallo trade would make new-look infield gorgeous

No matter how you feel about the Yankees current roster, I think we’d all have to agree that all moves to make the Major League lineup trend younger have, thus far, been relatively successful.

We love Didi Gregorius. He’s a cog and he’s learning on the job every single day. He was a Major League citizen when he arrived, and now his bat against lefties is almost as potent as his disarming smile.

Starlin Castro, too. He’s young, and he’s very clearly a player that should still be here several years from now. Adam Warren is great. He’s not a dynamic middle infielder with an underrated power bat. The middle infield was a dinosaur graveyard only two years ago, and now it looks like a preschool in comparison.

Mark Teixeira’s glovework will be eternally missed when he inevitably vacates his entrenched position in the Bronx, but his looping, ever-slowing swing will unfortunately not be. Greg Bird showed us last year he’s got big league gumption and the quick-twitch bat agility to make the ball jump.

So that’s the young infield! Fixed.

Oh, wait. Brian McCann’s behind the plate, sloping into his mid-30s. And Chase Headley’s at third, grappling with the Mendoza line and triple-clutching every time he’s got to make an important throw.

Neither player is without his benefits. But when this team is great again, it’s hard to see either of them being a major part of things.

Enter ESPN Insider Buster Olney’s latest tidbit.

In his Yankees-centric column last week, Olney floated a trade idea I’d never even considered, and now I can’t get it out of my brain: a package centered around McCann to the Texas Rangers for slugging third baseman Joey Gallo. Color me beyond intrigued.

Gallo, by all accounts, has the best raw power in the minor leagues. His big league cameo in 2015 impressed adequately, and makes him feel older than he actually is: 22. Even if his plate discipline never improves, it really feels like he’s Chris Davis. At the very least. He might outgrow third base, sure. But he hit 40 homers in 111 games in 2013 as a 19-year-old. 42 in 2014. He’s an undeniable otherworldly talent who just quite frankly offers the maximum amount more than Chase Headley does.

Brian McCann’s been a great Yankee, and I don’t want to hear otherwise. He’s lived up to his contract in all aspects. But it’s quite frankly rude to Gary Sanchez to continue to ignore his contributions. He’s still young. But as I’m sure you’ve heard before, age does nothing but increase over time.

Without trading McCann, what does an ideal 2017 look like? Sanchez and McCann splitting catching reps, McCann and Bird sharing first base like the last slice? What sense does that make? Roster construction-wise, it’s fairly nonsensical. Injuries happen. Always. But to plan for injuries and assume that’ll solve every logjam doesn’t seem prudent.

I’m a huge Brian McCann fan. When the Yankees inked his contract, I fist pumped through the streets of Stamford, Connecticut. It felt like a changing of the guard, the first time in a long time the Yanks had signed someone who I’d always felt was meant to be a Red Sox. Steady, dependable, fiery, and you never wanted to see him at the plate as an opponent even if he’d been mired in a month-long slump, because he just knew how to hit.

But where’s his place going forward? He’d be an ideal catcher for the Rangers, a team with a massive hole where a steady presence should be. Chase Headley got paid. That already happened. If the Yanks acquire Gallo, both parties will simply have to take their medicine.

Didi, Starlin, Bird, Gallo, Sanchez. It doesn’t have to work out this way. It might not. Rarely does it ever. But on paper, you don’t have to be an ESPN Insider to see the appeal.