By Paul Semendinger
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This exercise finally becomes somewhat challenging as we have six players who all wore #74.
In looking at each uniform number, in order to choose a player who was the best at that number, I will have to choose how that player performed while wearing that specific number, not how he did in his career overall.
For example, Mike Ford wore #74 in 2019, but he wore #72 last season. In this exercise, to be the best #74, I would only consider Ford’s performance in uniform #74.
Here are the players competing for this honor:
Nick Goody – Wore #74 in 2015 when he appeared in just seven games
Breyvic Valera – In his only season as a Yankee, he wore three numbers (#74, #70, #36), but he appeared in only twelve total games
Joe Mantiply – He pitched in one game as a Yankee in 2019
Joe Harvey – He pitched in nine games in 2019
Mike Ford wore two numbers (#74 and #36) in 2019, his best season as a Yankee. This might have taken me a lot of work to determine how he performed in uniform #74, but I didn’t have to do this because there was a better player who wore this number…
The GREATEST YANKEE to wear #74 was Ronald Torreyes.
Torreyes also wore two numbers as a Yankee. In 2016, he wore #17. He played in 72 games that year and batted .258. Nice.
But it was in uniform #74 that Ronald Torreyes had his best season (2017) when he batted .292 in 108 games. Torreyes then wore #74 in 2018 when he hit .280 in 41 games.
The greatest Yankee to wear #74 was Ronald Torreyes!
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Most of the research for this project comes from Baseball-Reference.com
Cover image modified from Getty Images
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