Will Yankees' infield prospects make Gleyber Torres expendable?

TAMPA, Fla.

Life without Gleyber Torres began Monday night at Steinbrenner Field, where DJ LeMahieu started at second base and Anthony Volpe got one of his intermittent turns at shortstop.

Torres’ absence is listed as temporary. He left the Yankees to join the Venezuelan team for the World Baseball Classic, which kicks off later this week and runs through the March 21 championship game in Miami.

In the meantime, the Yankees will get an extended preview of what their future infield could look like. And that future could be sooner rather than later if Torres winds up being traded later this month.

With the Dodgers losing Gavin Lux to a season-ending knee injury and the Rockies dealing with Brendan Rodgers’ serious shoulder complications, those are among the teams that could inquire about Torres or Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who is being caught in a roster squeeze with three of the Yankees’ top prospects: Volpe, Oswald Peraza and Oswaldo Cabrera.

Now that Torres is gone for a bit, the Yankees have an extra opening to evaluate that group on a daily basis, and all of them — including LeMahieu — will be regularly shuffled around the infield. As of now, it appears that Peraza has the inside track for the Opening Day shortstop job, with Cabrera in a super-utility role and the Yankees playing it conservatively by starting Volpe at Triple-A Scranton.

That leaves Kiner-Falefa as the odd man out, and with a $6 million salary coming off a very questionable season, he’s a challenging player to move.

Again, it’s early, and teams don’t want to mess with their depth too much with more than three weeks of spring training to survive. Along those lines, Peraza is expected to be sidelined until Thursday; Aaron Boone said he “tweaked” his lower leg while running the bases last Thursday. Peraza did play Saturday, however, and Boone does not consider it a lingering issue.

“He was better today,” Boone said after Monday night’s 9-2 win over the Pirates.

The Yankees are still figuring some things out, too. They have a good handle on Peraza and Cabrera — both performed well during last season’s call-ups — but Volpe seems intent on pushing his way onto the Opening Day roster. He is hitting .353 after going 1-for-2 with a pair of walks Monday night and also made a nifty charging scoop and throw. 

“I’m seeing a lot of things that I like,” Boone said of this group before Monday night’s game. “But I also just want it to play out, and right now looking at it as I got to get these guys ready for their season in the best possible way. Then as we get closer and closer, and start having those debates and conversations in more earnest, we’ll do that.”

To this point, Kiner-Falefa has seen the most time at shortstop, with at least parts of six games at the position. Volpe was at short for the fourth time Monday night — one more game there than Peraza — and he also has played some of three games at second base (Peraza has one there). All of Cabrera’s infield duty has come at third base, but Boone plans to put him at second and short as well.

Peraza is the best defensive shortstop of the group, and he certainly was capable at the plate during his Yankees tenure, hitting .306 (15-for-49) with three doubles and a home run. Having that taste of the Bronx stage, which continued into the playoffs when he supplanted Kiner-Falefa at shortstop later in the Division Series and alternated starts with him in the ALCS, is part of the reason the Yankees trust him so much now.

“When you get to the big leagues, you get an opportunity to learn firsthand, being up close to what it’s like to play there,” Peraza said through an interpreter. “Now, coming into camp with that experience, you’re trying to give the best you have, because the goal is to establish yourself as a big-league player. The reality is I’ve got to focus on what I do and give the best I have.”

With Peraza’s maturation, the unflinching versatility of Cabrera and the promise of Volpe, the Yankees are well-equipped to move on from Kiner-Falefa and even Torres if they decide to take a bigger swing. They’d be fine using LeMahieu as their regular second baseman in that scenario, although it’s probably premature to see Volpe over there at the major-league level just yet.

Torres once was in a spot similar to the one Peraza and Volpe are right now. In 2018, at the age of 21 — same as Volpe, Peraza is a year older — Torres was a top prospect who got called up in April, was named an All-Star and finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting. He also was a shortstop who was moved to second base.

Since those first two All-Star seasons, however, Torres has been chasing that former glory with limited success, though he did hit 24 homers last year.

Over the next few weeks, the Yankees will have to balance what they see from their next generation of infielders as opposed to Torres’ value to them — or another team, for that matter.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.