Gleyber Torres pulled during Yankees' loss to Blue Jays for lack of hustle on single 

Yankees manager Aaron Boone pulled Gleyber Torres out of Friday night’s 8-5 loss to the Blue Jays in the fourth inning after Torres didn’t run hard on a single two innings earlier.

Boone was shown on YES Network with his lineup card in hand in the home dugout explaining to Torres why he replaced him on defense with Oswaldo Cabrera. Torres could be seen pleading his case, to no avail.

It was not Torres’ first such transgression. Boone — known as a players’ manager — decided to act in a way that he rarely, if ever, has during his seven-year tenure in the Bronx.

“I just felt like I needed to in that spot,” he said. “I’m not going to get too down into the rabbit hole of making judgments on this one . . . I just felt like in that moment, I felt like I needed to do that. Simple as that. Like, it is what it is. It’s over with. We’ve got to move on. He and I have spoken and hopefully this is a great learning moment for all of us.”

Boone cut off questions about his decision after taking five on the topic in the postgame news conference. He refused to answer a sixth. “That’s it,” he said. “I’ve said everything I want to say on it and I’ve been pretty clear.”

Boone said Torres will be back in the lineup on Saturday.

Torres did not run hard out of the box on a second-inning single off the top of the leftfield wall. He later said, “For one second, I thought it was a homer.”

Torres was barely at first when the ball caromed to leftfielder Joey Loperfido.

“I feel really sorry for whatever I [did] tonight,” Torres said, “especially for the fans and also for my teammates . . . As a professional, you have to take the consequences. Especially in the moment, I don’t have to think too much. I have to run and have to get on second and see what happens.”

There’s a good chance Torres would have been thrown out at second even if he had run hard out of the box, but we’ll never know, because he didn’t.

To make matters look even worse, with two outs, Anthony Volpe doubled into the leftfield corner. Torres was sent home by third-base coach Luis Rojas and was thrown out at the plate on a leftfield-to-shortstop-to-catcher relay that was wide of the plate. Catcher Brian Serven had time to get back to the plate to slap the tag on Torres.

According to Katie Sharp of Stathead, Torres has been thrown out at home five times this season, the most in MLB.

Torres played second base during Toronto’s four-run third but did not come back out for the top of the fourth. Boone said he didn’t replace Torres in the top of the third because he wanted to give Cabrera time to get ready.

Torres answered “yes” when asked if he was surprised to get benched. “But he’s the skipper,” he said. “He did the right decision and now it’s no excuses. I take it and just learn and be ready for tomorrow.”

Aaron Judge praised Torres for coming back out to the dugout after he was yanked and called the seven-year veteran “a leader in this clubhouse.”

It’s not the first time Torres has appeared not to hustle. On June 25 against the Mets, he jogged to first on an eighth-inning grounder to short. After the game, both Torres and Boone cited a groin injury Torres had been dealing with. Boone also has mostly defended Torres for what appears to at times be lackadaisical play on defense.

Torres will be a free agent after the season. If the Yankees let him leave, newly acquired Jazz Chisholm Jr. could take over as the second baseman in 2025.

Even after Friday’s game was delayed at the start by 53 minutes because of rain, the crowd of 44,883 was pumped. The Yankees were coming off a five-game winning streak and were introducing Chisholm to the Bronx for his first home game. But the party didn’t last long as Marcus Stroman was charged with seven runs in 2 2⁄3 innings.

Chisholm, who had a pair of two-homer games Monday and Tuesday and was 9-for-17 since joining the Yankees, went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.

Judge hit his 40th home run, a massive 477-foot blast into the back of the left-centerfield bleachers in the first inning that left the bat at 117.5 mph.

It was the third-longest homer of Judge’s career, according to MLB.com. Judge’s longest was 496 feet on Sept. 30, 2017 vs. Stroman (then of Toronto). He also hit one 495 feet off Baltimore’s Logan Verrett on June 11, 2017.

Judge, who has 34 homers and 82 RBIs in his last 74 games. became the fourth Yankee to hit at least 40 homers in a season three times, joining Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle. He has 101 RBIs overall.

But the Torres saga overshadowed the concern for Stroman, Judge’s homer and Chisholm’s pinstriped debut.

In his last eight starts, Stroman (7-6) has been charged with 28 earned runs in 36 2/3 innings for a 6.87 ERA. His season ERA has gone from 2.82 to 4.10.

“That one’s definitely on me,” he said. “I think the offense did enough to win the game. Loss is definitely solely on me. Just didn’t execute. Was out of rhythm mechanically. Had no feel for my pitches. Just a frustrating one.”

Stroman gave up eight hits, walked one and struck out three. Toronto scored three in the first on an RBI single by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a two-run single by Ernie Clement.

After Judge made it 3-2 in the bottom half, the Blue Jays scored four in the third to knock out Stroman, who left with the score 5-2 and the bases loaded. Michael Tonkin allowed a two-run single by Serven and another single by George Springer, but Alex Verdugo threw out Leo Jimenez at home to end the inning.

Volpe hit a two-run homer in the fifth, his 10th home run of the season.

Cole on track. Gerrit Cole threw a bullpen session and said he expects to start Sunday. He missed his last outing with general body fatigue.

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.