Anthony Rizzo

Anthony Rizzo is the first baseman the New York Yankees grabbed at the 2021 trade deadline to save a sinking lineup, and he ended up sticking around for four years, a career-high 32-homer season, and a World Series trip. Over 370 games in the Bronx he hit .234/.326/.409 with 60 home runs and 172 RBI -- solid, streaky, occasionally spectacular numbers that never quite tell you why Yankees fans loved him the way they did. (Hint: it wasn't the batting average.)

How He Got Here

Rizzo didn't arrive as a nobody. He'd already survived Hodgkin's lymphoma as an 18-year-old minor leaguer in 2008, become a three-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner in Chicago, and won a World Series ring with the 2016 Cubs -- the one that ended a 108-year drought. That's a Hall of Fame resume before he ever put on pinstripes.

By July 2021, the Cubs were blowing it all up. On July 29th, the Yankees sent two minor leaguers to Chicago (Alexander Vizcaino and Kevin Alcantara -- neither of whom you need to remember) and got Rizzo back, with the Cubs kicking in cash to cover most of what remained on his salary. It was a salary dump disguised as a lineup fix, and it worked well enough -- 49 games, a .249 average, 8 homers -- to get New York into the 2021 Wild Card Game, where Rizzo hit a solo shot off Nathan Eovaldi in the sixth inning of a game the Yankees still lost 6-2. A preview of the whole tenure, honestly: real production, not quite enough.

In Pinstripes

He signed short-term twice rather than test the open market -- a two-year deal that March, opted out after a monster 2022, then re-upped again that November on a two-year, $34 million contract. In between, he had the best power season of his career: 32 home runs in 2022, part of a Yankees lineup that hit bombs at a freakin' historic rate all summer long. He went 8-for-29 with 2 homers as the Yankees beat Cleveland in the ALDS before getting swept by Houston in the ALCS.

That offseason, Rizzo did something that mattered more than any stat line: he lobbied Aaron Judge to stay in free agency, texting him every single day -- including, Judge later admitted on "The Tonight Show," photos of their two dachshunds hanging out together. (Somewhere in the Yankees' front office, someone's still trying to figure out how to put a dollar value on a dachshund photo.) "He went for my heart," Judge said. Judge signed his $360 million extension weeks later. Baseball decisions get made in a lot of ways. This might be the funniest one on record.

Then came the 2023 collapse. Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Nestor Cortes, and Carlos Rodon all broke down at once, and the whole thing spiraled into the injury cascade that sank an 82-win season. Rizzo's version: a collision with Fernando Tatis Jr. on May 28th that led to post-concussion symptoms, a stretch where he admitted to "fogginess" but kept playing anyway, and an eventual shutdown in September once the Yankees were cooked. Twelve homers in 99 games. Not the year anybody signed up for.

2024 was worse before it got briefly great again. A forearm fracture in June cost him two and a half months. Two fingers broke on a hit-by-pitch in the second-to-last game of the regular season. He missed the ALDS entirely, but Boone found room for him on the ALCS roster anyway, and Rizzo went 6-for-14 against Cleveland to help push New York back to the World Series for the first time since 2009. He started at first base in all five games against the Dodgers, drew four walks, and watched the Yankees lose the thing he'd spent three years trying to help them win. A month later, the club declined his $17 million option and paid the buyout instead. Rizzo was a free agent, and this time he didn't come back.

Key Moments

Where It Stands

Rizzo never became a superstar in pinstripes, and his .234 average as a Yankee will never look impressive next to the gaudier numbers around him. But he brought a championship pedigree, a genuine sense of humor about himself, and -- when his body actually let him play -- 30-homer power from the left side that the lineup needed. He also, in one small and very human way, helped keep Judge in New York. That's not nothing.

He went out the way a lot of complicated tenures do -- an option declined, a quiet goodbye, no ceremony in the Bronx. But for one November, a pair of dachshunds and a persistent text thread mattered more to the Yankees' future than anything Rizzo did with a bat.