Gleyber Torres' All-Star season fortifies Yankees fans' disdain for Brian Cashman

Letting Gleyber Torres go after the 2024 season was almost a necessity. Though he provided a spark for the last two months of the year during the team's World Series run, the New York Yankees slugger was far too inconsistent to pay a real salary (even though it turns out they wouldn't have had to after he signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Detroit Tigers).

Ever since the conclusion of Torres' 2019 All-Star campaign in the Bronx, it was all downhill for him and the Yankees. Torres never fully reached his 2018-2019 heights over his final five seasons. The overall numbers might've suggested he did, but the highs and lows over each campaign never sat well with anybody. The lows were incredibly low (hustle concerns, countless errors, baserunning gaffes, fluctuating strikeout woes) and the highs were ... pretty good, but unspectacular.

Fast forward to July 15, 2025, and Torres is an All-Star. He's starting at second base for the American League as a member of the Tigers, and Aaron Boone has selected him to be the leadoff hitter. He was hanging out with Aaron Judge during the Home Run Derby, while his replacement, Jazz Chisholm Jr., put up an embarrassing performance (three HRs). Brian Cashman must be punching air.

The problem wasn't that the Yankees let Torres go. The problem was that they publicly criticized him for showing up to 2020 summer camp (during the COVID season) out of shape. They publicly criticized his inability to handle shortstop. Cashman didn't even hesitate to make his feeling clear. Meanwhile, we're defending Anthony Volpe after every single time he makes an egregious mistake uncharactertistic of an everyday starting player.

Cashman and the Yankees clearly got in Torres head, as they were unable to read the room and understand he's a very mental player (given that his on-field performance suffered greatly).

But it got worse! Not only did they feel strongly about his struggles at shortstop, they gave him his desirable position of second base back at the end of the dreaded 2021 campaign. The Yankees would go on to lose the one-game Wild Card against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park (they didn't get home-field advantage because they lost the regular season tiebreaker).

The 2021 campaign was by far the worst of Torres' career. He registered 0.7 WAR and was terrible on both sides of the ball (.697 OPS, 93 OPS+ and 19 errors in 127 games). It's understandable that a change needed to be made, but it really felt like the Yankees caved more than they were getting ahead of what was a massive problem with one of their most important players. They gave Torres what he wanted even though he didn't earn it. He put up a protest and got his way. And even the Yankees didn't like it. They just tolerated it because they seemingly didn't feel like having to rearrange the roster beyond their comfortability.

Then came the death knell. The Yankees reportedly dangled him in trade talks over the next year, to the point where Torres, who had a resurgent 2022 season, completely cratered after the trade deadline after he had learned of the rumors. He batted .180 with a 464 OPS that August and played a role in the Yankees nearly blowing a 15.5-game lead in the division.

Though the trade rumors never got worse than that (remember, Gleyber for Pablo Lopez?!), there was always some loose chatter, especially because Torres again wasn't great during the first half of 2023 (and was even worse during the first half of 2024). In short, the Yankees should have learned their lesson after 2021: the relationship was beyond repair, and both sides needed to move on. Torres needed a fresh start and the Yankees couldn't possibly employ such a volatile player who was regarded as important as he was.

But the Yankees let the relationship die on the vine. They kept Torres for the next five full seasons despite evidence suggesting they shouldn't. Even after they acquired Jazz Chisholm Jr. at the 2024 trade deadline, they let Torres have his way and keep second base (even though he led the league with 18 errors at his position) after he put his foot down with the media. The Yankees had no problem bad mouthing him and using him in trade talks behind his back, but they also let him call the shots when he had no business doing so as his drastically fluctuating play hurt the team more than it helped it.

And now? Wth Detroit in 2025, Torres, after another spat with the Yankees following his departure, has been as good as ever. He's made just three errors on the year. He's hitting .281 with an .812 OPS and 129 OPS+ — numbers that would stand as his absolute best since 2019 if they hold. It's not a coincidence at all. This is the player he is. This is the player that was promised to Yankees fans after the Aroldis Chapman trade and subsequent MLB debut.

The most infuriating part? None of this ever should have been a problem. The plan was always for Torres to play shortstop for the Yankees — that's the position he played throughout the majority of his minor league career. When he started pouting about the switch at the major league level following Didi Gregorious' departure, that should've been the only warning the Yankees needed. The Yankees should have traded him, no matter the return, between the conclusion of the 2021 season and the trade deadline of the 2022 season. They didn't. And they paid the price.

Torres is now out of Yankees jail and living his best life, which is just more proof the Yankees are using floss to hold together whatever grip they have on the human element of the game.