Espinosa desires 2B spot

TAMPA — It’s clear even after Gleyber Torres missed much of last season with a torn ligament in his left elbow that the 21-year-old is the Yankees’ second baseman of the future — unless he ends up being shifted to third.

In the meantime, though, Danny Espinosa — who signed a minor league deal with the Yankees last month — sees some room for himself on a roster filled with young players and All-Stars.

“My mindset is to win the job,’’ Espinosa said Thursday. “And see where things will fall into place after that.”

The Yankees could keep Torres in the minors until April 16 to delay his free agency by a year.

And there’s no guarantee Torres or fellow prospect Miguel Andujar will play well enough to win a spot in the majors this spring.

If Espinosa or another minor league free agent, Jace Peterson, shows he can hold down the spot for the first two weeks of the season, they may at least get a shot.

“I want to win the job and be a part of this team the whole year,’’ said Espinosa, who has played second, third and short in his career. “This is a really good team. Talented. There’s big possibilities to do something special here.”

The 30-year-old Espinosa will have to turn around the downward spiral his career has taken — especially at the plate — if he intends to stick around.

His OPS slipped from .719 in 2015 to .684 a year later with the Nationals and then he suffered through an ugly season a year ago, when he had a .523 OPS split among the Angels, Mariners and Rays.

“Things were off,” Espinosa said of his time with the Angels, where he began last season. “It wasn’t a good fit.”

Espinosa declined to go into details, but admitted he wasn’t right at the plate, either.

“I don’t know what happened,’’ Espinosa said. “Obviously, the numbers say there’s something off. Things just didn’t work out. I made some adjustments to try to clean some stuff up to be more consistent.”