Gleyber Torres showing some signs of breaking out of long slump

Gleyber Torres didn’t hide from what was a brutal August, though, in truth, the second baseman’s slump has lasted far longer than a single month.

Entering Saturday,  Torres was 31-for-170 (.182)  with five homers and a .522 OPS in the season’s second half.

Going 4-for-9 with two homers and five RBIs in the last two games of the  just-completed series against the Rays — 10-3 and 10-4 victories that extended the Yankees' AL East lead to 5 ½ games after it had been trimmed to 3 ½ Friday — does not mean Torres suddenly has rediscovered the form that made him an All-Star in 2018 and 2019. It sure is encouraging, though. And if Torres continues to hit like that, the news couldn’t be better for an offense that has consistently struggled in the second half.  

“He’s a guy who lengthens our lineup, gives power, but also, when he’s at his best, I feel like a tough out against really good pitching,”  manager Aaron Boone said of Torres, who also flied out to the warning track in rightfield to end Friday’s 4-2 loss, denied a tying homer by maybe five to 10 feet. “He’s done it in his playoff career so far in just being a tough out, good bat-to-ball [skills], uses the whole field. When he’s at his best, he’s special up there. Hopefully this is getting him rolling a little bit for the stretch drive.”

The truth, of course, is that Torres hasn’t been consistently at his best since those back-to-back All-Star bids. After a 2019 season in which he hit 38 home runs and drove in 90 runs, he hit .243 with three homers and a .724 OPS in 42 games of the 2020 COVID-19 60-game regular season, then hit .259 with nine homers and a .697 OPS in 127 games last season, a year in which the Yankees abandoned their Torres-at-shortstop experiment in early September.

Behind the scenes, the Yankees grew frustrated  with Torres throughout a 2021 season that was bad in the field and almost as bad at the plate, sitting down with him multiple times, but now there are signs that he might be coming around.

This season started well enough for Torres, who hit .267 with 13 homers and a quite respectable .838 OPS through the first 60 games. But he slowly began falling off from there, cratering in August, when he went 18-for-100 (.180) with two homers, 33 strikeouts and a .464 OPS in 25 games. Then he went 4-for-27 (.148) in the first seven games of September. 

“I feel like in August, I just missed too many pitches,” Torres said. “I think I’m more confident. In August, I worried too much about myself if I struck out or didn’t do anything for the team. There were too many things mentally. Now I can come to the field with 100% confidence.”

Making the slump tougher, Torres said, was that it coincided with pretty much the entire club’s offense going into a tailspin.

“I can’t lie, it’s just hard because of the situation the team [was going through],” Torres said. “We lost so many games . . . Myself, I didn’t do anything for the team in that moment.”

Boone, whose team starts a five-game trip Tuesday night in Boston, indicated he sees the distinct possibility of Torres delivering  the rest of the season.

“With Gleyber, I feel like it’s about him getting into strong positions with his lower half,” Boone said. “I feel like sometimes he gets disconnected. I feel like that was happening to him a lot in August where he’s kind of got that leg kick and gets underneath it. When he gets in that strong hitting position, ready to fire, he gets off a lot more ‘A’ swings. He’s really good going the other way, but it’s getting in that strong [hitting position] on that back side and letting it go. I feel that’s happening more consistently the last week. He hasn’t gotten all results, either, but I feel like he is taking more ‘A’ swings more often.”