Round trip Torr’
Gleyber continues his hot spring with first HR
TAMPA — Gary Sanchez wasn’t the only Yankee to display opposite field power on Saturday.
Gleyber Torres hit his first homer of the spring, taking a 3-2 pitch from ex-Yankee Justin Wilson off the plate and sending it into the seats in right at Steinbrenner Field in the sixth inning of the Yankees’ 7-1 win over Detroit.
“It’s great to see and obviously plays in our ballpark,” manager Joe Girardi said of Yankee Stadium’s short right field. “We think, from our scouts seeing him play, his swing fits our ballpark, too.”
Torres clearly wasn’t trying to go deep.
“My mentality is to stay up the middle and if it goes out, it goes out,” Torres said through a translator. “It hit it and made good contact. I was just running hard.”
It continued an impressive spring for the 20-year-old, the prize of last July’s trade that sent Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs.
He played shortstop and second base Saturday and is now 8-for-19 with three doubles, a triple and a homer.
Asked about his success against better pitchers after not having played above Class-A, Torres said: “It’s definitely [much] different competition. From what I see, pitchers are sharper, more consistent and can dominate with all pitches. They stay around [the] zone.”
Though he admitted to being “excited” about going deep, Torres said he’s not getting ahead of himself.
“Things came out all right [Saturday], but I can’t think too much about it,” Torres said. “[Sunday] is another day.” That’s music to Girardi’s ears. “I think he really understands how to hit and knows how to hit in situations and counts,” the manager said. “He’s very mature.”
Bryan Mitchell couldn’t match Masahiro Tanaka’s four perfect innings, but his four innings went pretty well. The righthander gave up a run on three hits as he bounced back from a poor showing in which he surrendered four runs in 2 ¹/3 as he tries to win a spot in the rotation.
“Pretty good,” Girardi said of Saturday’s performance. “Obviously the one hiccup in the outing was two outs, nobody on and they end up scoring a run. It looked like he made a pretty good pitch 3-2 [to Alex Avila], but you’re going to get some of those, you’re not going to get some of those, but you still have to stop it. I thought he was better today.”
Matt Holliday showed he will be able to provide protection for Sanchez, as he hit a homer to right-center in the fifth from the cleanup spot behind Sanchez.