Yankees claim infielder Hanser Alberto off waivers from Rangers

On Friday, the Yankees claimed career-minor league infielder Hanser Alberto off waivers from the Texas Rangers for a tidy $20,000.

It looks like the Yankees have found their replacement for Didi Gregorius, who will be lost for most of the 2019 season following Tommy John surgery.

OK, that first line isn’t true — at least not yet, and it certainly won’t be 26-year-old Hanser Alberto, formerly of the Texas Rangers.

A native of the Dominican Republic, Alberto signed with the Rangers for $7,000 way back in September of 2009. Soon after, Alberto started his long, slow climb towards the majors.

Along the way, which have included a total of 730 minor league games across eight seasons, Alberto won a Gold Glove in 2014 as the best defensive shortstop in all of minor league baseball. Less than a year later on May 28, 2015, Alberto made his big league debut, going 1-for-3 with an RBI triple versus the Red Sox.

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Alberto’s brightest moment came in the 2015 ALDS against the Blue Jays. During Game 2, he replaced the injured Adrian Beltre — and in the 14th inning, drove in the game-winning run with a single.

Unfortunately, Alberto was never able to capitalize on his 15 minutes of fame. In 2016, he only saw 35 games with the Rangers, hitting .143 with five RBIs and 18 strikeouts in just 56 at-bats.

His ability to play a myriad of infield positions, well, didn’t save Alberto from beginning the 2017 season at Double-A Frisco, before missing all but five games due to a shoulder injury.

Though Alberto battled back to resume his career in 2018 — which included 101 games at Triple-A Round Rock where he hit .330/.346/.462 with 45 runs scored, 17 doubles, seven homers, 58 RBIs and only 28 strikeouts in 361 at-bats — he was unable to translate that success to the major league level.

It’s interesting that the Yankees would take a flier on a guy coming off a season that included just 13 major league games (5-for-27, a.185 BA) — especially considering Adeiny Hechavarria did an admirable job after being acquired from the Pirates.

However, it’s expected that the free agent Hechavarria will command a similar salary to what he made last year ($5.9 million). What this sounds to me is that the Yankees will go one of two ways to fill the gap at shortstop in Gregorius’ stead.

The simplest but most expensive route is signing free agent Manny Machado to a long-term, highly lucrative deal. Naturally, this would likely signal the end of Didi’s time in New York, which many fans would take umbrage with.

Otherwise, Gleyber Torres slides over from second base to his natural shortstop position — and the Yanks go with some in-house combination of Ronald Torreyes, Tyler Wade or re-signing the likes of Neil Walker to man second.

While there are other free agent possibilities, namely Brian Dozier, Daniel Murphy and Alcides Escobar, I expect the Yankees to go big or stay with what they know.

As for Alberto, he’s nothing more than minor league depth, much like Jace Peterson was last season, and Rueben Tejada the season before that.