Yankees' Aaron Boone moves on from Gleyber Torres incident

Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres was removed from Friday night's game... — Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres was removed from Friday night's game for what manager Aaron Boone deemed was a lack of hustle in running to first base on a base hit. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke

By Laura Albaneselaura.albanese@newsday.com @AlbaneseLauraUpdated August 3, 2024

A day after Aaron Boone made the rare decision to bench a player for not hustling, the Yankees' manager said he was pleased with how Gleyber Torres reacted to the measure and is confident the incident is behind them.

“I think the way he handled things, obviously coming back out [to the dugout], I saw his comments after” was admirable, Boone said before the Yankees' 8-3 victory over the Blue Jays on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. “You never want it. You never want to do that. I’ve only done it a couple times. And look, there are other times you can make a case and look back and ‘why not here?’ That’s all fair. Ultimately, it’s my decision and my job to make decisions in the moment.”

Torres was back in the lineup Saturday, batting fifth and playing second base. He went 1-for-4 with a walk and scored a run.

Boone said there are “gray areas” when it comes to sitting a player for lack of effort, but “I felt in the moment last night that I needed to do it for our team.”

Torres, who has been guilty of not busting it out of the box in the past, hit a long single in Friday’s 8-5 loss to the Blue Jays. He thought it was a home run, he said, watched as it bounced off the leftfield wall and never ran hard on his way to first. He had to stop there, though it’s unclear whether he could’ve made it to second anyway on his 100.7-mph drive. He then was thrown out at home on Anthony Volpe's two-out double.

Boone spoke to Torres after his return from the basepaths, let him play defense in the top of the third and then pulled him for Oswaldo Cabrera to begin the fourth. Boone said the delay was to make sure Cabrera had ample time to prepare, so that he could address the situation with Torres immediately, and to "not make a complete theater of pulling him off the field."

Afterward, Torres, contrite and tear-stained, returned to the dugout to cheer on his teammates and stood in front of the cameras after the game to offer his apologies, earning plaudits from Aaron Judge for not hiding from the media.

“He did the right thing,” Torres said of Boone. “I feel really sorry for what I did today . . . I don’t want to be the bad part of the night.”

Boone was far more forthcoming Saturday than he was Friday evening, when he repeatedly declined to elaborate on the '‘why now’' of benching Torres. Known to be a players' manager, Boone often has eschewed such public measures — such as when Josh Donaldson admired what ended up not being a home run in the 2022 playoffs (one of many similar instances), or when Trent Grisham took a decidedly casual fielding approach in a loss to the Reds in July, misplaying a single and allowing an extra base.

There is nuance to these decisions, Boone said, and of determining what constitutes behavior worthy of a benching.

“There are certain things that come up over the course of the year, and I get there are gray areas all the time,” he said Saturday. “In that moment, I felt like that’s what I needed to do, and it’s really as simple as that. But as far as our resolve and our focus and where we need to be, I feel good about where we are right now.”

Boone noted that Torres, who’s in a contract year and is hitting .233, is heating up and will be vital to the Yankees' stretch run. He has had a decidedly miserable year, including a number of defensive miscues, but entering Saturday, he had a .291/.344/.473 slash line in his previous 14 games, with two homers and eight RBIs.

“He’s an enormous part of this team, a key cog of what we’re doing,” Boone said. “I’ve told him, if we’re going to get to where we want to go, he’s an important part of that . . . I feel like over the last month, he’s really started swinging the bat like Gleyber. I can’t overstate the importance that he is to our lineup and just the balance and the length he creates, especially when he’s at his best.”