Yankees Need to Find a Way to Dump Starlin Castro

Starlin Castro has been one of the worst second baseman in baseball in 2016 and is owed $30 million by the New York Yankees over the next three seasons.

Currently ranked 23rd in the league among qualified second baseman with -0.1 wins above replacement using FanGraphs’ metric, Starlin Castro’s first year with the New York Yankees has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.

The 26-year-old Castro has been well below average on both sides of the ball in 2016. He’s hitting .255/.292/.389 (79 wRC+) in 429 plate appearances for the Yankees. His .292 OBP is the absolute worst among any qualified MLB second baseman this year.

Castro has always been a hacker at the plate, but he’s taken his poor approach to new heights in 2016. His 36.8% swing rate at pitches outside the strike zone is a career high according to Pitchf/x information, and his 4.4% walk rate is well-below his already terrible career mark of 4.9%.

More from Yanks Go Yard

• What on earth is going on with Yankees, Fernando Tatis Jr. and flight to New York?
• 4 former Yankees players New York can still reunite with in free agency
• Yankees top prospects butt heads after Giants’ gritty win over Commanders
• CC Sabathia defends Yankees’ massive Aaron Judge contract
• Scott Boras closed Yankees-Carlos Rodón deal from Fenway Park, put cherry on top

At this point, Castro’s struggles are no fluke either. He has been among the very worst hitters in baseball in three of the past four seasons. Here are his wRC+ numbers for each of the past four years (100 is league average).

2013: 74 wRC+

2014: 117 wRC+

2015: 80 wRC+

2016: 79 wRC+

Starlin has been at least 20% worse than the league average hitter in three of the last four years, and has been above average exactly once.

It isn’t as if he is making up any of that value with his glove either. Castro has been just as terrible on defense. His -5.2 UZR is third-worst among qualified second basemen this year. Yes, it is his first season playing the position, but he has always been a butcher in the field. 

More from Yankees News

• Yankees top prospects butt heads after Giants’ gritty win over Commanders
• CC Sabathia defends Yankees’ massive Aaron Judge contract
• Scott Boras closed Yankees-Carlos Rodón deal from Fenway Park, put cherry on top
• Orioles are bailing out Yankees and AL East by botching free agency
• Guy who caught Aaron Judge record HR ball cost himself tons of money in auction

The worst part of this is that Starlin Castro is owed more than $30 million over the next three years, and the Yankees had to give up a valuable trade chip in Adam Warren to land him. It was a poor allocation of resources when New York already had a comparable MLB-ready second baseman ready to go in Rob Refsnyder.

Admittedly, Refsnyder hasn’t been anything special with the bat this season either. He’s hitting .248/.321/.316 (71 wRC+). On the other hand, this is Refsnyder’s first taste of the big leagues and he raked in Triple-A the last three years. There are reasons to think he could get better with time. Starlin Castro has over 4000 career plate appearances. This is who he is at this point.

Crucially, Rob Refsnyder is also making the league minimum salary the next three seasons and can be cut at any time with virtually no repercussions. Castro’s deal looks like a potential albatross at a time the Yankees are working hard to reduce payroll. That $30 million could have been used towards adding a decent free agent pitcher last offseason.

So what can the Yankees do now? A good start would be shopping Starlin Castro hard to contenders who need middle infield help over the next month. He will almost certainly clear trade waivers, and if he doesn’t, the Yankees should just let him go for a handshake.