Aaron Boone reached his limits with Gleyber Torres on Friday night, benching the second baseman after he failed to run on what became a 363-foot single to the left field wall at Yankee Stadium.
With the Yankees down 3-2 in the second inning, Torres drilled the ball before watching it out of the batter’s box. There’s no guarantee he would have made it to second base had he hustled, but he never gave himself the opportunity.
Here’s Gleyber Torres watching that long single from multiple angles. #Yankees pic.twitter.com/vuzc8xHxzc
— Gary Phillips (@GaryHPhillips) August 3, 2024
Torres was then thrown out at home plate after he tried to score from first on an Anthony Volpe double. The Yankees ultimately lost the 8-5 game by three runs.
Torres returned to the field in the top of the third inning, but Oswaldo Cabrera took his place at second in the fourth frame. Prior to that, Torres and Boone had a conversation in which the player appeared to plead his case to the manager. That was broadcasted by the YES Network.
Gleyber Torres and Aaron Boone engage in a discussion in the dugout before being taken out of tonight’s game. pic.twitter.com/LpTNMRg7NH
— YES Network (@YESNetwork) August 3, 2024
Torres spent two games on the bench in late June after failing to hustle on a grounder against the Mets, though Boone also cited a lingering groin injury for the time off.
The impending free agent, hitting .233 with a .667 OPS overall, has been better since then, taking a .280 average over a 24-game span into Friday’s game.
However, the seventh-year Yankee has been a lightning rod for unwanted attention this season with his defense also struggling. Torres leads all second basemen with 14 errors, and he recently made waves for not sounding too thrilled with the Yankees’ plans to get him work at third base.
Torres is not the first player to watch a ball that didn’t leave the yard under Boone’s watch, nor is he the first to not hustle in general.
Josh Donaldson pimped a few flyballs that stayed in the yard during his disastrous tenure with the Yankees, including once in the 2022 playoffs. Alex Verdugo, exiled from Boston after failing to hustle, doesn’t run balls out with regularity. Such was the case on a 373-foot single last Saturday at Fenway Park. And when the whole world watched DJ LeMahieu dog it on an assumed double play a few weeks back, Boone insisted he hustled and doubled down the next day.