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Few players on the 2024 New York Yankees have been more polarizing than Gleyber Torres.
Statistically, he had one of the worst seasons of his career, hitting .257 with 15 home runs in 154 games (prior to this year, he was a .267 career hitter who averaged 27 homers per season). His struggles at the plate also seemed to carry over into the field, where he matched a career-high 18 errors and -7 outs above average, per Baseball Savant.
At the trade deadline, he was a possible trade chip. At minimum, it seemed like 2024 would be the end of his time in the Bronx.
From Torres' perspective, he knew how important this year was, telling The Athletic's Brendan Kuty on Tuesday that 2024 was “one of the most important years for my career.”
“Sometimes I just think like, ‘If I don't do right, maybe I'm not going to sign here. Maybe I'm going to some other place,'” Torres said.
The second half of the season showed some hope for Torres, who will hit free agency right around his 28th birthday. He hit .293 after the All-Star break with a .780 OPS, and he cut his strikeout rate by 5%.
“The game gets real hard and mental, and you’re just fighting through different things and trying to make adjustments, but it’s also those little small things that can start to snowball and get you clicking and back to the player we know you are,” Boone told Kuty the week after the All-Star break, speaking of Torres.
Gleyber Torres sought help from ex-Yankees teammate Gio Urshela
What happened during the All-Star break may hold the key to Torres' second-half resurgence. While the best players in the game descended on Arlington for the Midsummer Classic, Torres flew to Tampa to work on his swing at the facility he co-owns with his former Yankees teammate, Gio Urshela.
“I went over there for a restart a little bit,” he said in July, adding that Urshela ” knows me and knows my swing and all my routines.”
The result, as Kuty explained, was Torres hearing from Urshela and his personal hitting coach that he needed to go back to what made him successful over the first six years of his career.
“The message: He's at his best when he's hitting the ball the other way,” Kuty wrote. “So, Torres went to the drawing board.”
So far in the postseason, Torres hasn't exactly been electric, but he has been productive. Despite only hitting .211 in 19 at-bats, he has a home run, a double, and six walks compared to only three strikeouts.
