Early 2026 Yankees signee takes aim at analytics approach after short stay in system

Oooh, boy. Got a live one here. A real whopper. Or maybe we don't! Maybe we have legitimately nothing here. What we definitely have is an embedded and quote-tweeted Jeff Frye post, which ... that should tell you where this is going.

Nick Torres, the 32-year-old 2025 Mexican League MVP the Yankees signed this offseason (and someone we called a potential Ben Rice platoon partner during a moment of great boredom), made Yanks Go Yard "headlines" when he was nowhere to be found in spring training.

As it turns out, his Yankees career consisted of 40 games with the Double-A Somerset Patriots, his first stay in affiliated ball since the 2018 season in the San Diego Padres' system.

Since then, the game has changed. Stateside, baseball is certainly more new-school, an approach that has filtered down through the minors and prioritized loud contact over securing victories. The benefit of striving against all odds down to the last out, moving the runner over, and sacrificing for the greater good has probably been deprioritized across the board in the minors, given that ... well, those standings don't count for very much in the grand scheme (though they still matter to the men in uniform).

Needless to say, Torres' time with the Yankees in the minors brought that old-school/new-school contrast back to the forefront.

Yankees 2026 addition Nick Torres calls out new-school baseball mentality

The full slate of Torres' comments are below, but the line that likely stood out most to hungry consumers of "back in my day" content was, "Coming to the Yankees this year after 6 years of playing everyday only to win, I noticed a clear distinction of guys who know how to play the game and play to win vs playing to beat the analytics which evaluate you and get you paid."

Aaron Boone and the Yankees' staff has done a ... pretty great job this year, but the one criticism that still sticks has been the intangible but somehow still perceptible possibility that ... something just stinks in there when October arrives (or when extra innings are on the table and the manufacturing of runs has to start under duress). Maybe a culture of analytics overload and focus on the individual is to blame?

Notably, Nick responded to me and emphasized that this is not an anti-Yankees viewpoint; "I had an awesome experience with the Yankees this year. They’re the only MLB org I’ve been with since 2018 so I can only speak to them specifically, but they have BY FAR the best personnel of any org.." he wrote.

It is, however, an interesting way of viewing the modern game, opening it up to the criticism of individual goal-chasing occasionally superseding team development along the way. Food for thought! No matter how you end up thinking.

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