Gary Sanchez’s Yankees career a case of unfulfilled potential

Once on his way to Yankees immortality, Gary Sanchez was instead traded away to the Minnesota Twins on Sunday

Gary Sanchez’s time in Yankees pinstripes began with a mighty bang and ended with a tiny whimper.

Sanchez, the 29-year-old former New York Yankees catcher, was traded to the Minnesota Twins on Sunday in a deal also involving Gio Urshela in exchange for Josh Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and prospect Ben Rortvedt. The trade brought an end to a six-year Yankees career that reached such dizzying highs but also some disastrous lows.

When he earned a big-league call-up for good in August 2016, Sanchez seemed destined for Yankees stardom. He hit his first home run against, who else, the hated Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. And he never stopped.

Sanchez hit 11 home runs in his first 23 career games, at the time a Major League record since broken by Aristides Aquino. He had 19 through 45 games, breaking a record that had stood since Wally Berger hit 17 for the Boston Braves in 1930. He was the first player among all the legends who have traveled through the Bronx to have three multi-home run games that early in his career.

He was a worthy successor to a lineage of Yankees catchers that went back to Jorge Posada, Thurman Munson, Yogi Berra, and Bill Dickey. General Manager Brian Cashman bestowed a nickname, “the Kraken,” on him in 2015 before he ever had a hit in the Majors. “For some reason, it came to me that Gary Sanchez was a mystical beast, that his bat could unleash fury on his opponents,” Cashman told Bryan Hoch in his 2018 book The Baby Bombers: The Inside Story of the Next Yankees Dynasty.

Despite the fact he had only played one game in 2016 before August, Sanchez still finished runner-up to the Tigers’ Michael Fulmer in Rookie of the Year balloting. He followed up that rookie season by slugging 33 homers in his sophomore year, giving him 53 within his first 177 career games. That was, at the time, the most in Yankees franchise history, 13 more than Joe DiMaggio and more than double what Mickey Mantle hit.

Yankees had already seen the best of Sanchez

He was just 25 years old, but Sanchez’s best days were already behind him. Never again in the four years since his historic debut did he reach those lofty heights. His batting average fell to .186 in 2018, the worst ever by a Yankees batter with at least 300 at-bats. Since batting .283 with a .920 OPS in his first two seasons, Sanchez is a .201 hitter; his OPS has declined more than 170 points to .743. He is the only player in Yankees history with three different seasons batting under .205 in at least 150 at-bats.

Sanchez was still able to conjure up images of his past glory. In a 23-game stretch last season from May 27 to June 24, he hit .338 with eight home runs and 18 RBI. But he was also capable of going long stretches where he looked lost at the plate, at one point going 20 consecutive games in July and August without a homer while batting only .188. When the Yankees played the Red Sox in the winner-take-all Wild Card game last October, it wasn’t Sanchez behind the plate but Kyle Higashioka catching Gerrit Cole. Sanchez came on as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning, what turned out to be his last plate appearance as a Yankee.

At the same time as his struggles at the plate earned him many a Bronx cheer, in the field Sanchez was a catcher who often couldn’t catch. Among 37 catchers with at least 1,500 innings since 2018, Sanchez ranks 29th in Defensive Runs Saved. He’s tied with Jorge Alfaro for most passed balls allowed with 38.

Sanchez’s Yankees career once seemed like it could end with him immortalized in bronze in Monument Park. Instead, it will be in the red, white, and navy blue of the Twins, where he’ll share catching duties with Ryan Jeffers, just as he did with Higashioka in New York.

That magical 2016 season now feels like long ago.