Gleyber Torres Will Make a Pit Stop In Detroit

Gleyber Torres is changing his stripes, so to speak. After seven seasons as a regular on the Yankees’ middle infield, the 28-year-old has agreed to a one-year, $15 million deal with the Tigers. The move fortifies the middle infield of a team fresh off its first postseason appearance in a decade while also creating an opportunity for an enigmatic player to secure a much larger deal while still in his 20s.

Acquired from the Cubs ahead of the 2016 trade deadline as part of a four-prospect package in exchange for Aroldis Chapman, Torres has spent the past seven seasons as a mainstay of the Yankees’ middle infield, playing the last three as their regular second baseman after bouncing back and forth between shortstop and second in his first four seasons. He made the American League All-Star team in both 2018 and ’19, finishing third in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting in the former year and getting a bit of down-ballot MVP support in the latter, during which he clubbed 38 homers and hit for a 125 wRC+, neither of which he’s been able to replicate.

In 2023, Torres set a career high in WAR (3.6) while posting his highest wRC+ (120) and home run total (25) since ’19, but his ’24 season was an uneven one. His final numbers were unremarkable (.257/.330/.378, 104 wRC+), and he was briefly benched twice for a lack of hustle, but he dug himself out of a deep, early slump to nose his way across the league average line. He was at his best late in the year, a top-of-the-lineup catalyst who helped the Yankees reach their first World Series since 2009.

After ranking second on the team with a .347 on-base percentage in 2023, Torres began the ’24 season as the Yankees’ leadoff hitter, but he lasted just 12 games before being dropped in the order, first to sixth, and then to seventh. He hit just .220/.295/.254 (62 wRC+) through the end of April, didn’t homer for the first time until May 2, and carried a .231/.307/.347 line with eight homers and an 88 wRC+ through the first half. Over the All-Star break, he shored up his swing at a Tampa hitting facility that he co-owns with former teammate Gio Urshela, where he worked on elevating the ball and hitting to the opposite field with greater frequency. Statcast’s bat tracking data tells us he shortened his swing slightly, added a bit of bat speed, and tapped into his fast swing more frequently. His squared-up and blast rates both improved, the former from 23.8% to 28.8%, the latter from 6.7% to 9.8%.

Torres hit .292/.361/.419 (124 wRC+) in the second half while cutting his strikeout rate from 22.6% to 17.5%, and thrived upon being restored to the leadoff role. From August 16 onward — the point when he returned to the leadoff spot for good — he hit .313/.386/.454; his 142 wRC+ in that span surpassed even teammate Juan Soto, who picked the wrong time to slump (.229/.361/.429, 128 wRC+) for the purposes of this comparison. Torres carried that momentum into October, batting .297/.400/.432 through the Division Series against the Royals and the ALCS against the Guardians and reaching base in each of the Yankees’ first 13 postseason games. He was particularly adept at getting on base ahead of Soto and Aaron Judge in the first inning, doing so in eight out of nine games through those two series. In the World Series, the Dodgers held him to a 5-for-26 showing with just two times on base in the first inning — but then they stifled just about every Yankees hitter in that five-game romp.

In reaching free agency, Torres faced two problems. First, his annual performances have varied so much that it’s been hard to know what to expect from year to year. He’s an above-average producer when he’s hitting 20-plus homers, but he totaled just 15 last year and nine in 2021, when he set full-season lows with a 96 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR. Shifting from second base to shortstop led him to shed weight and power in the name of improved agility, and caused him to press at the plate as his offense declined. While Torres has developed into an especially disciplined hitter — his 22.4% chase rate set a full-season low and placed in the 92nd percentile — his contact stats have declined to below average:

Peeking inside his in-season improvement, though Torres’ exit velocity and hard-hit rates improved only modestly over the season’s final six weeks, and his barrel rate actually fell, he cut down on his rate of poor contact (balls he got under, topped, or hit weakly). Where he underperformed slightly relative to his expected stats before mid-August, he overperformed thereafter:

Second, Torres has a tendency to give back runs on the basepaths and in the field, cutting into his value. He’s been eight runs below average on the bases over the past three seasons; his -4.6 runs was the majors’ sixth-lowest mark in 2024, and he was thrown out at the plate six times, tied with Yandy Díaz for the majors’ highest mark. Meanwhile, his past two years’ fielding metrics have been increasingly worrisome (-15 DRS, -8.1 UZR, -8 FRV), with his 2024 marks (-11 DRS and -5 FRV) both among the bottom three at his position. Together, his fielding and baserunning limited him to just 1.7 WAR in 2024.

One can understand why Torres and his agents might not have viewed this winter as his best chance to land a big-dollar, long-term deal, particularly with comparatively few contenders in the market for help at the keystone. Hence the one-year deal, which even given a stronger-than-expected free agent market — and even without the drag of a qualifying offer in Torres’ case — came in at $3 million less than the average annual value projected by both Ben Clemens and our median crowdsource for our Top 50 Free Agents list.

The Tigers, who went 86-76 — their first time above .500 since 2016 and their first time in the playoffs since ’14 — got a relatively robust 3.5 WAR out of their second basemen, with rookie Colt Keith making 125 starts there, Andy Ibáñez 24, Zack McKinstry 11, and Buddy Kennedy two. Keith, who entered the season ranked 46th on our Top 100 Prospects list, hit .260/.309/.380 (97 wRC+) with 13 homers and seven stolen bases in a very uneven season during which he posted a wRC+ of 152 or higher in May and July, and 87 or lower in the other four months, including just an 11 wRC+ in March/April. His defense was a mixed bag at best; graded as a 30 fielder on the 20-80 scouting scale entering the season due to his bulk, limited range, and stiff actions, he was eight runs below average according to DRS, but one above average via Statcast.

Per MLB.com’s Jason Beck, president of baseball operations Scott Harris said that the Tigers plan to play Torres at second and move the 23-year-old Keith to first base, where the team had already advised him to take groundballs this winter. As for what that means for 25-year-old Spencer Torkelson, the top pick of the 2020 draft, he’ll have to compete for time at first base and designated hitter. While Torkelson has shown intermittent signs of putting it together over the course of the past three seasons, he hit just .219/.295/.374 (92 wRC+) with 10 homers in 92 games, and earned a demotion to Triple-A Toledo for the second year out of three. This time, he was sent down in early June, returned in mid-August, and hit a respectable .248/.338/.444 (125 wRC+) with six homers in 151 PA the rest of the way. This move does not appear to be a vote of confidence in him sustaining that level of production.

With Kerry Carpenter vying for DH time as well, it’s still not entirely clear how manager A.J. Hinch will piece all of this together, but the Tigers have time to figure it out. As for Torres, ZiPS projects him for a 108 OPS+ and 2.5 WAR in 2025, a solid step up from what he provided this season. Here’s a look at his percentile projections, courtesy of Dan Szymborski:

And here’s what his current multiyear projection looks like:

Pick the length of the desired deal and ZiPS has a suggestion for the value of the contract based on that projection: one year and $21 million, two years and $39 million, three years and $54 million, four years and $66 million, or five years and $72 million. Though Torres did accept less than the recommendation for a one-year deal, all of those values are probably well below where he and his camp hoped to come in. If this is a pillow contract, it’s not one of those big cushiony ones.

As for the Yankees, their $303.2 million tax payroll according to RosterResource already places them slightly above the fourth-tier threshold ($301 million), meaning that they’ll pay a significant premium on whoever they add to fill a vacancy either at second or third base, depending upon where Jazz Chisholm Jr. winds up. Per our Depth Charts (which are based only on Steamer at this point), the going-on-27-year-old Chisholm projects to out-produce Torres (3.5 WAR to 3.0), but unless the Yankees can free up some tax space by trading Marcus Stroman, a big-money addition such as Nolan Arenado (who did not include the Yankees on his six-team no-trade list) seems unlikely.

The Yankees may wind up missing Torres more than they realize, but it’s clear they only valued him so highly, and never appeared particularly compelled to extend his contract; that extensions for the likes of Luis Severino and Aaron Hicks went south may have contributed to that skittishness. Torres is an imperfect player, but the chance that his late-season improvement carries over into 2025 nonetheless makes this signing a worthwhile short-term move for a Tigers team that intends to contend.

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