With October looming, teams will soon have to decide how carefully they tread with Juan Soto and Aaron Judge when the stakes are highest.
Gleyber Torres could help change the equation.
Austin Wells, in the cleanup spot, will have to be the one to make teams pay if they pitch around Soto and Judge, but Torres could play an equally important role as a deterrent from the leadoff spot if he is able to continue getting on base at the same clip he has been of late.
After a brutal first three months of the season, when it seemed like the pressure of a contract-year and early struggles were weighing him down, Torres has become an on-base machine, coinciding with his move back to the top of the Yankees lineup.
“He’s been excellent,” manager Aaron Boone said Tuesday afternoon, with the Yankees on the verge of clinching the AL East. “As much as we talk about a lot of other people, him setting the tone for us with good at-bats over and over at the top has been huge.”
On June 26, when he was on the bench against the Mets for the first day of his two-game “reset,” Torres was batting just .215 with a .294 on-base percentage and .628 OPS through 80 games.
In 69 games since then entering Tuesday, the 27-year-old second baseman was batting .294 with a .362 on-base percentage and .778 OPS.
That surge included a full-time move to the leadoff spot — where he had started the year, only to fall out of it because of his struggles — on Aug. 6. In 34 games since, he hit .308 with a .383 on-base percentage and .830 OPS.
“I think you’re seeing the result of what he is — that’s a really good hitter in the prime of his career that just, for whatever reason, got off to a tough start and struggled by his standards for a couple months at the plate,” Boone said. “But I think you’re seeing a good hitter that’s correcting itself over a long season. I feel like he’s been in a really good frame of mind here these last couple months. Really just focusing on doing his job and having good at-bats.”
Coming into Tuesday, Torres had reached base safely in 43 of his last 45 games.
Judge said on Sunday that he felt like Torres was on base to lead off every game, and that was not an overexaggeration — in five of the six games on their West Coast trip, Torres led off the first inning with a single or walk.
In addition to just getting on base, Torres has regularly put together long at-bats, allowing Soto and Judge to see more pitches before they come to the plate.
He entered Tuesday averaging 4.23 pitches per plate appearance, the seventh-highest mark in the majors.
“His swing decisions have been as good as they ever have [been] in his career, even when he was struggling,” Boone said. “So now the fact that that’s continued forward here — so he hasn’t changed anything, other than he’s getting results now and found his swing and found his groove a little bit.”
Boone is always optimistic that his slumping players are on the verge of turning a corner, but he repeatedly threw his support behind Torres through the first few months of the season, insisting he could break out of his first-half malaise.
Though his defense has still been hit-or-miss — Torrres has made a number of strong plays on difficult grounders but at times gets himself in trouble with the routine play — he seems to be much more relaxed heading into a crucial time of the year.
“Anytime you start to play at a level that you’re accustomed to or you’re capable of, I think there’s some level of relief in that and being in a good place,” Boone said. “It’s a tough game. … But I think it’s fair to say that yeah, he’s in a better headspace of how well he’s performed.
“But it’s a credit to him, too, of getting through some of the tougher moments of the year that he certainly went through.”