TORONTO — Gleyber Torres’ mental reset may be over by Friday, with an opposing left-hander on the mound.
Until then, Aaron Boone gave Torres a second straight day out of the lineup Thursday in hopes of finally shaking the Yankees’ second baseman loose from his miserable start to the season.
Boone said he has left it up to Torres and the hitting coaches to decide whether he uses the time off to get away from the game (as much as one can during the season) or dive deeper into his work on his swing.
But one thing was not in question for the manager.
“I know how much Gleyber cares,” Boone said Thursday at Rogers Centre before the Yankees opened a four-game set against the Blue Jays. “I know how hard he’s working behind the scenes. But I’ve also been in his shoes where the game’s hard and it can beat you down. I think we’re on the same page with that.
“I’m looking forward to what I know is going to be a resurgence for him at some point. I continue to say, he’s obviously a really important part of our team and our lineup in giving length to our lineup. He’s too good a hitter to be held down for too long.”
After being the Yankees’ most consistent healthy hitter from start to finish last season, Torres has been a shell of himself this year in a costly turn of events while batting .215 with a .628 OPS through 80 games.
Torres has repeatedly said that his tough start has nothing to do with his being in his contract year, a situation that could understandably compound itself once a few rough weeks pile up.
There was a stretch recently where it looked like Torres might be coming out of it, batting .266 with a .808 OPS in 30 games from May 12 to June 13.
But in nine games since then, he has sunk right back into his offensive malaise, batting just 2-for-29 (.069) with a .401 OPS.
It has coincided with a brutal stretch for the Yankees at large, entering Thursday having lost nine of their last 12 games with a lineup that has struggled to produce outside of its top three hitters in Anthony Volpe, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.
Torres also made a pair of errors in his last four games before hitting the bench, looking more like he was carrying his offensive struggles onto the field with him, and then caught Boone’s attention by not running out a ground ball late in Tuesday’s loss to the Mets.
Boone, who tries to keep the pulse of his players from a personal standpoint, could tell Torres needed a few days.
What that time off looked like, Boone left up to Torres.
On Wednesday, the 27-year-old did some work with the hitting staff after it had identified a few “subtle things” in his swing.
But there was also a mental component to his break.
“We’re talking about a guy that’s in the physical prime of his career that has a long, long track record of hitting,” Boone said. “So there’s no reason to think we won’t get that out. But it’s a very mentally taxing game. It’s a gauntlet, it’s a bear, it’s a mother. The arena’s tough. Sometimes, that takes some time to work through and get to that place.”
Asked if he thinks Torres still believes he can turn it around, Boone said he did.
“It’s hard to believe that sometimes when you’re going through it and you feel that,” Boone said. “But I think deep down, you know, ‘I just need to get it to click and get it firing,’ and then you kind of take off and your brain gets out of the way a little bit.”
