TAMPA, Fla. — Gleyber Torres has spent his late mornings and early afternoons taking balls on a high school infield over the last week. He’s working on his defense at both shortstop and second base these days with his position with the Yankees uncertain.
The Yankees gave up on him at short in September, but did nothing to address their shortstop issue before the owners locked the players out, shutting down the business of baseball.
It leaves them with an infield that is unsettled and perhaps unsettling defensively.
That has a domino affect. Will Torres be traded or will he play second base? If he does, where does DJ LeMahieu play?
That uncertainty, however, did not affect LeMahieu this winter.
When asked where he expected to play this season, LeMahieu smiled and shrugged.
“It’s part of my skill set being able to play [the three infield bases],” LeMahieu said. “I am OK with that.”
The 33-year-old LeMahieu did defensive drills at shortstop Monday at a workout with other big leaguers at a local college. He has taken balls at shortstop the last two spring trainings as practice for where he plays in a shift.
He had been valuable as the Yankees super-utility player the first two years with the team. They signed him to a six-year, $90 million deal before last season with the idea they could play him at second — where he is most valuable.
But if they have to play Torres at second this season, LeMahieu gets moved to first or third. While LeMahieu has won two batting titles, he’s not a power hitter. First and third is a spot that is normally home to big boppers.
With LeMahieu platooning at first or third the Yankees are not getting as much bang for their buck.
A year after he won the American League batting title and became the first player in the modern era to win it in both leagues, LeMahieu’s exit velocity was his lowest since 2017. His launch angle was the lowest of any full season since 2017 and he was among the lowest in the league in barrels, or balls hit with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle. He had the lowest slugging percentage of his time with the Yankees (.362) and his most strikeouts (94).
The Torres at shortstop experiment has really put the Bombers in a bind now that it has failed.
Torres had a breakout season playing almost half the year at shortstop in 2019, hitting a career-high 38 home runs and slashing .279/.337/.535 with an .871 OPS. That power was enough for the Yankees to overlook his defensive woes and let Didi Gregorious walk as a free agent and move ahead with Torres as their shortstop.
But it disappeared.
Torres hit just 12 home runs over the last two seasons.
In 2020, the Yankees — and, to be fair, other teams’ talent evaluators — thought Torres was just hindered by the fact he showed up after the COVID-19 spring training shutdown out of shape and that resulted in a leg injury.
In 127 games last season, Torres had nine homers and 51 RBI. He is slashed .259/.331/.366 with a .697 OPS. He also had a career-high 14 stolen bases.
