The New York Yankees have activated SS Gleyber Torres on his own holiday weekend.
The Yankees lineup is still mostly in a parallel universe these days, struggling to produce runs against a bevy of pitchers, and featuring names that most of us hoped would be relegated to the Alternate Site.
Unfortunately, the “Break Glass in Case of Calf Tweaks” box has been broken into far too often for our liking.
But we have to celebrate the good things as the Yanks attempt to make a playoff push, and for the second consecutive weekend, a key player will be returning seemingly out of nowhere.
Following in DJ LeMahieu’s footsteps, the Yankees have announced they’ve reinstated Gleyber Torres — just ahead of Labor Day, the rhyming holiday which John Sterling has used as a part of his sing-song Torres home run call since 2018.
Of course, since no good news can remain unaccompanied by bad, Torres returns about 24 hours after Gio Urshela hit the shelf to help manage his elbow bone spur. The Yankees lineup will now be missing three presumed regulars (Urshela, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton), the legal minimum.
We saw this move coming last night when Torres showed off his Baltimore room service on IG, but it’s still a fantastic sign that there were no hiccups in his recovery on Friday and he’ll be with the team one day earlier than expected recently (and a lot earlier than we anticipated last week).
Torres’ early-season action was marred by an elbow bone bruise suffered in Baltimore, as well as fielding woes, which we ascribed to discomfort.
Of course, Torres was beginning to turn things around finally, battering the Red Sox and raising his average to .231 when the injury bug struck on an otherwise nonchalant sprint to first against the Rays (it’s always the Rays).
But now, Torres is back, on the holiday weekend he owns domain over. Yes, we got to September quicker than anyone thought. We also got Gleyber back. Count your blessings.
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