Yankees' Gleyber Torres will need to earn his playing time
Gleyber Torres #25 of the New York Yankees is hit by a pitch in the third inning against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, Apr. 10, 2022 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Three games, three different lineups for the 10-men-for-nine-spots Yankees.
DJ LeMahieu and Kyle Higashioka sat at the start on Sunday night as the Yankees took on the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
On Saturday, it was Aaron Hicks who wasn’t in the lineup.
On Opening Day, most notably and most surprisingly, it was Gleyber Torres who was benched.
The word “benched” was not chosen by accident.
The idea of Torres being the odd man out for Friday’s opener was never broached in any Yankees preseason prognostication. He had a good spring training, batting .294 with three homers.
Yet manager Aaron Boone, who started the season with a new three-year contract, might have been showing Torres and the rest of the team that there’s a new sheriff in town (even if he’s the same sheriff).
Really, what other conclusion can one draw from Torres not being in the Opening Day lineup other than it was a message from Boone (and his front office lineup-making helpers)?
The message: Torres needs to earn his time, especially with LeMahieu and Isiah Kiner-Falefa on site to form a perfectly respectable double-play combination.
If that was the message, what’s wrong with that? Torres has been a disappointment over the last few seasons. The Yankees finally cut bait with Gary Sanchez before spring training and probably are one bad season away from doing the same with Torres, who has seen his OPS go from .872 in 2019 to .724 in 2020 to .697 last season.
Torres, who said he initially was “mad” when he heard he was not going to start the opener, came off the bench to contribute a tying sacrifice fly in the 10th inning of the Yankees’ 6-5, 11-inning victory over the Red Sox.
Back in the lineup on Saturday, Torres went 0-for-3 in the Yankees’ 4-2 win. On Sunday, he went 1-for-3 with a fifth-inning double off the right-centerfield wall and a hit by pitch in the Yankees’ 4-3 loss to the Red Sox.
The first defeat of the season was a frustrating one for the home team. The Yankees left 11 on base, hit into a pair of double plays and went 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Still, they did take two of three in the series with a pair of comeback victories.
I asked Torres before Sunday’s game if he thought Boone was sending him a message on Opening Day.
“No,” he said. “All the guys had a meeting during spring training and Boone basically said that maybe all [10] guys don’t make the Opening Day lineup. He said in that moment, possibly me or DJ or whatever guy. That time it’s me. It’s nothing wrong with that. Just prepare on the bench and be ready for any opportunity . . . Boone has a really good conversation with everybody before every game and after the game.”
Boone was a major-league player for 12 seasons. Did he ever suspect a manager was sending him a message by not putting him in the lineup when he expected to play?
“Probably,” he said before adding with a smile: “I feel like Jack McKeon kept me out of a couple days when I should have been in there.”
McKeon was the manager in Cincinnati when Boone played for the Reds from 1997-2000.
“I don’t think I’m doing that right now,” Boone said. “I’m trying to do right by these guys and trying to get them a day [off] where I can, but also kind of get our best matchups going. I’m not doing anything from a motivation standpoint in that way.”
It’s unlikely that Torres needed a day off on the first day of the season. But Boone certainly pushed the right buttons on Friday: Before Torres’ clutch sacrifice fly, LeMahieu hit a tying solo homer in the eighth and the Yankees won in the 11th on Josh Donaldson’s walk-off single.
Did Torres get the message? If so, that’s called win-win, both for Boone and the team he manages.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
