Michael King

Michael King is the pitcher the New York Yankees gave up to get Juan Soto, and if you only remember one thing about his five years in the Bronx, that's probably it. Fair enough -- it's a franchise-altering trade. But King was a legitimately fun player to watch get there: a 12th-round afterthought who turned himself into Aaron Boone's most trusted bullpen weapon, then into a starter good enough that the front office was comfortable including him as the centerpiece of a seven-player blockbuster. That's not a bad way to spend a Yankees career, even a short one.

Path to the Bronx

King grew up in Rhode Island, starred at Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick (two state titles, 2013 Gatorade Player of the Year, jersey since retired), and pitched at Boston College before the Miami Marlins took him in the 12th round of the 2016 draft -- 353rd overall, after a junior year in which he led the BC staff with eight wins, a $100,000 afterthought the type of guy nobody writes about (yet). He spent one full year in Miami's system, going 11-9 with a 3.14 ERA at Class A Greensboro in 2017, before the Marlins flipped him to New York that November for Garrett Cooper and Caleb Smith, tossing in $250,000 of international bonus pool space to sweeten it. Nobody called it a heist at the time. It just kind of became one.

Finding a Role

He debuted on September 27, 2019, throwing two scoreless innings in relief against Texas -- the last player in baseball to make his big-league debut that year. 2020 was a mess (7.76 ERA in 26.2 innings across nine appearances, four of them starts, in a pandemic-shortened season nobody wants to talk about), but 2021 was the turn. On April 4 of that year, with Domingo German getting rocked in his season debut, King came out of the pen and threw six scoreless innings, retiring 16 Blue Jays in a row. The Yankees still lost 3-1 (of course they did), but King had shown Boone exactly what he could be: a multi-inning fireman who could erase a bad start before it wrecked the bullpen.

The Breakout, and the Injury

2022 was the best baseball King ever played in pinstripes. Used almost exclusively in relief, he went 6-3 with a 2.29 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP across 51 innings, striking out 66 against just 16 walks. On April 22, he struck out eight of the ten Guardians he faced across three innings -- seven of them in a row -- joining Ryne Duren (1959) and Ron Davis (1981) as the only pitchers in franchise history with an 8-strikeout, three-inning relief outing. Boone wasn't shy about what he had: "I think Michael has the ability to do probably anything."

Then, on July 22 at Baltimore, King fractured his own elbow throwing an 0-2 slider to Ramon Urias -- not a comebacker, not a line drive, just the pitch itself snapping something. He walked off in visible pain and needed season-ending surgery. The one bit of good news that fall: his UCL was intact. No Tommy John required.

The Trade

King came back in 2023 and, after a slow build, moved into the rotation for good in late August. In nine starts down the stretch he went 1-4 with a 2.23 ERA, allowing one earned run or none in seven straight outings between August 24 and September 26. It was enough to make the Yankees believe he could start full-time in 2024. Instead, on December 6, 2023, they traded him -- along with Jhony Brito, Randy Vasquez, Drew Thorpe, and Kyle Higashioka -- to San Diego for Juan Soto and Trent Grisham. King was the headliner of that return, and he knew it. That January, he told the New York Post, "I feel like the Padres won the trade," adding he was "shocked to see the Yankees part with that many people." Less than a year after that, he made the Padres' argument for them -- 12 strikeouts, zero walks, zero runs across seven innings in his first career postseason start, a Wild Card Series win over Atlanta that no pitcher in MLB history had ever matched in a postseason debut.

He never got a full season as a Yankees starter to prove what he'd become -- the Padres got that version instead, and King himself was the first to say the trade worked out his way. But for four-plus years, he was the guy Boone could throw into any inning of any game and trust to get out of it. That's a real Yankees career, blockbuster or not.