Gleyber Torres is Back, But Not Peak Torres

by EJ Fagan

June 5, 2024

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission. This was published a few days ago so the stats don't include the last few games.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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Something got lost in the middle of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto’s incredible road trip: Gleyber Torres is looking like his old self again. But which old self?

Torres reinvented his swing last year. He cut his strikeout rate from 22% in 2022 to an excellent 14% in 2023. He set a non-2020 career high walk rate at 10%. Even while most of the Yankee team was collapsing in the second half, Torres hit .302/.374/.504. Torres put up a pretty sweet batting profile on the whole, and probably got a little unlucky with batted balls:

I was optimistic about Torres entering his free agent year. It seemed like he had finally figured out his problems as a major league hitter.

Then, Torres had one of the worst stretches of his career to start the season. He hit .220/.296/.254 in April with zero home runs, four doubles, and a 25% strikeout rate. His defense looked as bad as it’s ever looked at second base. Pure disaster.

Torres has always been prone to slumps and hot streaks. Here is his rolling 10-game wRC+ since 2021:

Note the deep troughs during periods in 2021 and 2022. We all remember Torres hitting .180/.204/.260 in August 2022, causing the Yankees to move Aaron Judge to the leadoff spot while chasing the home run record.

2024’s slump wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it lasted for longer. Torres wasn’t making much progress for at least a month. His OPS bottomed out around May 11th, when he was hitting .207/.290/.253 with a 24% strikeout rate.

Side note: What happened? Both Andy Singer and Paul O’Neil have guessed that Torres suffered some sort of hand injury when took a hit by pitch early in the season. Players have an incentive to hide injuries during their walk year.

The next day, Torres hit a big 3-run home run against the Rays. The Yankees were down 6-5 in the 8th inning. Torres pounded a ball into the left field stands. It felt like a moment:

Torres immediately went on a run. He’s hit .278/.346/.472 since that game.

Is he back? Sort of. The good news is that he’s coming up on a month of great offense, including against some tough pitching staffs. His defense has looked a little better as well. although the overall numbers remain poor. Statcast thinks that it’s a genuine improvement in batted ball quality, not just good luck:

The bad news is that he’s not doing it like 2023 Gleyber Torres - Torres has struck out in 26% of plate appearances against 10% walks. He’s become more of a power hitter than his 2023 form, at the expense of regular hits.

On one level, I’m just happy to have some version of Good Torres back. You can make a strong argument that he should be batting 5th right now. I suspect he will be moved up in the order if he keeps the pace up for another few weeks. On the other hand, I wish we could see last year’s Torres come back. He was truly an elite hitter last year, and would provide a lot more protection for Soto and Judge than the current crew behind them. This version of Torres will probably settle in closer to his 2021-2022 self: a slightly above average hitter. Maybe he has a second gear that we’ll see soon.