Will Gleyber Torres be back with Yankees in 2025 after strong second half?

Shortly after position players reported for Yankees spring training back in mid-February, second baseman Gleyber Torres didn’t mention any specific individual goals for 2024.

He did, however, verbalize a career one.

“I want to be a Yankee for life,” said Torres, a two-time All-Star entering the final year of his contract.

Torres intuitively seemed to know that was a long shot for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that pretty much everyone knew, even in the spring, the Yankees’ first, second and third priorities for the following offseason would be re-signing Juan Soto.

And, even though Torres had made two All-Star teams with the Yankees, the most recent of those came in 2019.

But Torres wanted to, at the very least, make the Yankees think hard about it.

Halfway through this season, it seemed letting Torres seek a free agent contract elsewhere would be a no-brainer for the organization.

But Torres’ strong second-half performance, which has carried over into the postseason, while not guaranteeing some kind of big-money offer from the Yankees, puts things at least in the realm of the possible the 27-year-old is back with the club in 2025 and beyond.

“I think we’re looking at a good player that’s in the prime of his career that has gotten it going over the last couple of months,” Aaron Boone said Tuesday before his team looked to take a two-games-to-none lead over the Guardians in the American League Championship Series. “I do feel like he’s in a really good place.”

That was not the case the first part of the season.

Torres hit .231 with eight homers, 35 RBIs and a .654 OPS in 93 games comprising the first half but hit .293 with seven homers, 28 RBIs and a .780 OPS in 61 games in the season’s second half.

Included in the latter totals is the superbly consistent job Torres did the last 39 games of the regular season after being permanently moved to leadoff. In the role, Torres slashed .313/.386/.454 with five homers, eight doubles, 18 RBIs, 20 walks and 31 runs.

In the first five games of the postseason, Torres reached base in 10 of his 25 plate appearances (four hits, six walks) and scored five of the Yankees’ 19 total runs in those games.

“The swing feels good,” Torres said before Tuesday’s game. “(I’ve made) a lot of adjustments, a lot of work before the game, and when I go to the home plate I didn't think too much. Just trust in myself and try to do the job.”

Torres traced much of his second-half success to the work he did in Tampa – where he lives in the offseason – during the All-Star break at a facility he has there with one of his closest friends, Gio Urshela, a former teammate with the Yankees.

“He knows me really well for many years, and he said a couple things, like I rollover much, I hit (too) many ground balls to short and third,” Torres said of Urshela. “Basically, when I'm good, I hit it to the opposite field.”

Torres said in the spring it did cross his mind that 2024 could be his final season in pinstripes, though he quickly added he didn’t think that caused his rough start. It was, though, something he thought about in the spring, in large part because he was continually asked about it.

“I don't want to lie, I (didn’t) want to talk too much about free agency. I just wanted to play the season,” Torres said. “During the season, it was a struggle. I don't want to say a struggle because I (thought) too much about free agency. It's just like, I tried to do the right thing and nothing happened.”

He continued: “For sure, sometimes I think, if I don't do (well), maybe I'm not going to sign here, I go to some other place. But I (didn’t) feel any pressure in the moment. I just felt pressure on myself to do the right thing because the last two years, I've been playing good, decent, and this year is one of the most important years for my career, and I (wasn’t playing well). For sure, I felt really (frustrated) with myself.”

Torres also credited Boone for publicly, and privately, pumping him up, feeling a turnaround was inevitable, the manager backing that up by continuing to play the second baseman (Boone did bench Torres briefly in early August for a lack of hustle in a game against the Blue Jays).

“I really appreciate Boonie, because in the (worst) struggles I have, they always keep me in the lineup and help me believe in myself,” Torres said. “That's the right thing to do. If your entire organization believes in you, don't trade you, they keep you and they show you the love, you have to figure out a way to get better and help the team.”