Yankees: Aaron Boone downplaying Gleyber Torres’ errors is irresponsible

Gleyber Torres had another terrible night at shortstop for the Yankees on Monday.

Look, the New York Yankees are 16-6 and have the deepest roster in Major League Baseball. There’s nothing to complain about (aside from the injuries that are happening again), but it’d be irresponsible to ignore what’s going on at shortstop right now.

Gleyber Torres, who is statistically the worst fielding shortstop among qualifiers, is not instilling much confidence that he can hold down the position in New York for the next decade.

That’s left manager Aaron Boone forcing himself to sound like a politician speaking between the lines whenever he’s asked about the 23-year-old. He was at it again after the Yankees’ 6-3 win over the Red Sox on Monday night.

“I think he’s doing well overall,” Boone said after the game via Brendan Kuty of NJ.com. “He’s had a couple of hiccups game-wise that kind of have dinged him statistically.”

This comes less than a week after Boone said Torres “has been really good” defensively despite leading the league in errors.

We don’t want to say Boone is lying again, but … Torres made another two errors on Monday and failed to make a tough play when trying to field a fly ball in shallow left field. He also did not look comfortable whatsoever making throws to first base — yes, we know it was raining — but that’s been a trend all year. He’s been skipping balls over there for weeks now.

Torres made 11 errors in just 77 games at shortstop last year and he’s already up to five in 21 games in 2020. It’s undoubtedly a tough transition to make for a number of reasons. This will be his first “full” season at shortstop since entering the MLB. He’s stepping in and trying to be the next long-term franchise player at the position since Derek Jeter. On top of all that, he’s largely struggling on offense.

Nobody’s saying pull the plug on the Torres shortstop experiment, but can we hold him accountable when speaking to the media? Telling everyone he’s playing well when he very much isn’t is bound to create more negative headlines than just outright saying he’s got a lot of work to do before being crowned the shortstop of the future.

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