Starlin Castro

Robinson Cano left for Seattle after the 2013 season and the Yankees spent two years pretending second base wasn't a problem. It was a problem. So in December 2015, general manager Brian Cashman shipped reliever Adam Warren and utility infielder Brendan Ryan to the Chicago Cubs for Starlin Castro, a 25-year-old with three All-Star appearances already on his resume and a reputation for being maddeningly inconsistent. Nobody guessed at the time that Castro's most important stat line as a Yankee wouldn't be a batting average. It would be the name he'd become two years later: the guy the Yankees had to give up to get Giancarlo Stanton.

Making an Entrance

Castro didn't ease into pinstripes, even if the opener itself was quiet. The Yankees' actual Opening Day, April 5, 2016 (pushed back a day by rain), gave him a modest 1-for-4. The next afternoon, April 6, he made up for it: 4-for-5 with a double and a three-run homer -- his first as a Yankee -- in a 16-6 demolition of the Houston Astros. Two games into his Yankees career he already had seven RBI, breaking the franchise record for a player's first two games (Todd Greene had held it with six, back in 2001) and putting him among the best debuts by RBI total in franchise history since the stat became official in 1920.

It was the kind of start that made a skeptical fan base sit up. It also set a bar Castro couldn't consistently clear, which turned out to be the whole story of his two years in the Bronx: brilliant in bursts, ordinary in between, and never quite boring.

Finding Power in the Short Porch

Castro's first full Yankees season, 2016, ended up being the best power year of his career. He hit .270/.300/.433 with a career-high 21 home runs and 70 RBI across 151 games, becoming just the fourth second baseman in Yankees history to clear 20 homers in a season -- joining Robinson Cano (five times), Joe Gordon (four times), and Alfonso Soriano (twice). The short porch in right field did a lot of the heavy lifting: Castro hit 14 of his 21 homers at home, with an .849 OPS at Yankee Stadium against a pedestrian .610 mark on the road.

He wasn't doing it alone, either. Shortstop Didi Gregorius also hit 20 home runs that year, and the two of them, both 26 or younger, became just the third middle-infield combo that young in MLB history to each reach 20 in the same season. (Nobody was talking about the Yankees as contenders yet in 2016. Little moments like that were the first hints something was building.)

The All-Star Season

2017 was better, at least by the numbers that matter to a lineup: .300/.338/.454 with 16 homers and 63 RBI in 112 games, plus a spot on the American League All-Star team. It was Castro's fourth career All-Star nod overall -- he'd made it three times with the Cubs, in 2011, 2012, and 2014 -- but his first as an American Leaguer, and his first as a Yankee. By then Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez were the names getting the magazine covers, and Castro's steady .300 average from the two-hole quietly made their power more dangerous.

October didn't go as well. Castro hit .220 over 13 postseason games as the Yankees beat Cleveland in the ALDS and fell to Houston in the ALCS, one series short of a pennant. It wasn't the stat line anyone remembered him for once the offseason arrived, though. Something bigger was about to make his batting average irrelevant.

The Trade That Defined Him

On December 11, 2017, the Yankees sent Castro, along with prospects Jose Devers and Jorge Guzman, to the Miami Marlins for reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton and roughly $30 million in cash to offset the back half of Stanton's contract. Castro wasn't a throw-in. He was the headline return piece -- a 27-year-old, fresh off an All-Star season, still owed roughly $23.7 million over the two years left on his deal. Miami wasn't just taking on money. It was getting a legitimately useful everyday second baseman in exchange for the best hitter in its own clubhouse. (That's how lopsided the Stanton deal really was. The Yankees didn't have to give up a top prospect. They gave up Starlin Castro.)

It's an odd kind of legacy -- being good enough that trading you actually costs something, while still being remembered mostly as the price of admission for someone else. A year after Castro left, Gleyber Torres took over second base and became a star in his own right, which only underlined how quickly the Yankees had moved past him.

Life After the Bronx

Castro played two seasons in Miami and later signed with the Washington Nationals, where he played his final big league game on July 11, 2021, before Washington released him that September. He kept playing after that, first in the Mexican League and later in the independent Atlantic League, chasing his way back to affiliated ball. He never got there.

He didn't need to. Two seasons, one All-Star Game, a franchise-record debut, and a trade that changed the direction of the entire organization -- that's a more interesting Yankees career than most players who stick around twice as long ever manage to have.