Yankees' Gleyber Torres struggling badly in his walk year

MINNEAPOLIS – Aaron Judge handled the pressure of his “walk year” as well as anyone has in the sport’s history.

Statistically, certainly, one could argue better than anyone had before (though Judge’s teammate, Juan Soto, may well make a run at that by season’s end).

Judge, famously, after turning down the Yankees’ $213.5 million extension offer just before the start of the 2022 season, won big on the bet he placed on himself, hitting an American League record 62 homers while making a run at the AL Triple Crown, running away with the AL MVP and landing that offseason a nine-year, $364 million contract.

Gleyber Torres is having an entirely different walk-year experience.

The 27-year-old second baseman, a free agent after the season who very much would like to play the entirety of his career with the Yankees, is not, of course, Judge.

Per the franchise’s preference over the years of generally not offering extensions to players with expiring contracts – and that goes for pretty much everyone in the Yankees organization, including managers and front office members – Torres was not offered an extension before the season.

It is far too soon to make predictions – or to even speculate – on what the market will look like for Torres in the winter, or even how hard the Yankees will try to retain him.

And that would be true if Torres had gotten off to a hot start this season, which, obviously, he has not.

Torres came into Tuesday night’s game against the Twins hitting .208 with two homers and a .562 OPS in 42 games.

But Sunday’s 10-6 victory over the Rays brought a rare 2024 highlight for the infielder. Torres’ three-run homer in the eighth inning off Tampa righty Shawn Armstrong, after falling in an 0-and-2 hole, gave the Yankees a 9-5 lead (the Rays had cut what had been a 6-0 lead to 6-5 in the seventh).

“I don’t know what’s going (to happen) next game, but for tonight, especially in that moment, it feels good,” Torres said Sunday. “That homer, I feel like I did something for the team to be part of (it).”

It was reminiscent of Torres’ comments after hitting a key three-run double in an April 27 victory over the Brewers in Milwaukee when he said: “Finally I (did) something for the team.”

That hit, it turned out, didn’t spark a hot stretch and it, obviously, is too soon to tell if Sunday’s big swing will. Torres, after all, entered Tuesday in a 3-for-23 skid.

“Hopefully a big at-bat, like he had a Sunday, goes a long way in kind of settling him,” Aaron Boone said before Tuesday night’s game.

Boone has been encouraged by Torres’ at-bats overall of late, especially in not chasing pitches out of the zone. But, in the end, Boone believes the infielder will hit because he generally has in his career, streaky as that career has been, both in the field and at the plate.

“First quarter of the season here, just not sticking those balls that he normally does,” Boone said. “You feel like with his track record and his age, that’s going to change. And as long as continues to make good swing decisions and just kind of get settled a little bit, he’s going to get it rolling.”

  Notes & quotes

  Gerrit Cole (right elbow inflammation), who stayed behind in Tampa when the Yankees flew here Monday night, threw a 35-pitch bullpen Tuesday at the club’s minor league complex. Cole, who has thrown three bullpens so far in his rehab, will meet the team when it returns for Friday’s home series against the White Sox and is slated to throw another bullpen Saturday … DJ LeMahieu (non-displaced fracture in his right foot) faced live pitching at the minor league complex Tuesday and, Boone said, is likely to start a rehab assignment with Double-A Somerset “either Thursday or Friday.” Boone said there is no prescribed number of at-bats for LeMahieu before he’s activated, though the manager said he’ll likely need in the range of 5-8. “We’ll see as we go,” Boone said …righty Luke Weaver, after throwing 1 2/3 scoreless innings Sunday in St. Petersburg, brought a 15 1/3 scoreless inning streak into Tuesday. Opponents are 3-for-50 against him in that stretch.