Gleyber still up for short, but 2B will do
BALTIMORE — Gleyber Torres isn’t giving up on his future as a shortstop in the big leagues, but he’s not holding out for it, either. The struggling infielder said Tuesday he would play second base, even next year if that’s what the Yankees need. He reminded everyone that he was a pretty good second baseman two years ago. “The way I played the first two years of my career, I was playing at second. I made two All-Star Games there,” Torres said. “So I mean, whatever that they need. If I need to go back to short next season, I’ll be available, but if not, I’ll stay at second and do my things like the last couple years.”
Tuesday night, Torres showed some rust at second base. He bobbled a ball on what should have been an easy double play. Aaron Boone removed him for defense in the bottom of the eighth inning.
“So tonight was... just a number of things. I thought it was the right thing to get him out of there tonight,” the Yankees manager said, without expanding on the
reason.
Torres understands Boone’s decision to move him. “I make too many errors. And I feel that where we are right now, I think we can’t make any, any errors and miss on a game or the playoffs or something like that, so I feel really good to move to second,” Torres said before Tuesday’s 7-2 victory over the Orioles.
The move came on the heels of Torres committing two errors over the three-game series against the Mets, including an error with two outs that kept the door open for a threerun homer. He has 18 errors this season, the third most by a shortstop.
The move, however, did not seem too well thought-out, considering the Yankees had demoted their backup shortstop, Andrew Velazquez, the day before. Gio Urshela, who has struggled all season, was in the lineup at short Tuesday against the Orioles and will get the bulk of the starts there.
Torres had a breakout season playing almost half the year at shortstop in 2019, hitting a career-high 38 home runs and slashing .279/.337/.535 with an .871 OPS. That power was enough for the Yankees to overlook his defensive woes and let Didi Gregorious walk as a free agent and move ahead with Torres as their shortstop.
Torres has hit 10 home runs in his last 151 games over the last two seasons.
In 2020, the Yankees — and, to be fair, other teams’ talent evaluators — felt that Torres was just hindered by the fact he showed up after the COVID-19 spring training shutdown out of shape and that resulted in a leg injury.
This season, in 110 games, Torres has seven homers and 45 RBI. He is slashing .249/.320/.348 with a .667 OPS. He has a career-high 12 stolen bases.
GERMAN BACK SOON
Domingo German, who has been on the injured list since August 1 with a shoulder strain, was making a rehab start Tuesday night and depending on how he comes out of it, the right-hander could be back in the bullpen by the weekend.
“We’ll see if he’s going to end up needing another one, or possibly even him joining us this weekend,” Boone said. “We’ll just kind of see how it goes for him tonight. See how he responds and at that point make a decision. Do we want him to have one more, or just bring them with us?”