Hot Gleyber Torres playoff run could add another cost to Yankees' 2025 payroll

Every time New York Yankees fans dared to type the modifier "Losing Player" around Gleyber Torres' name in the season's second half, something amazing happened: he snapped out of it. This trick didn't work prior to the All-Star break, when Torres' heightened error count and flub-filled OPS defined his season. But nowadays, it seems as if every glitch in Torres' matrix is followed by an emphatic reminder of his potential peak.

In Game 1 of the ALDS, Torres didn't snuff out a first-inning rally, but his dash for home (boom: extinguished) seemed like the symbol of another RISP bust. Ultimately, with runners on second and third and no outs, the Yankees' 3-4-5 hitters were entirely unproductive, but when the team's lightning rod falls victim to the contact play, the image can still linger.

In his next at-bat, though, just as the Twitter fingers were ready to snap, Torres unloaded and turned a pitch the other way, finding the short porch for a lead-snatching home run. Given that the lead flipped five times in this one -- an MLB playoff record -- every strike was entirely necessary. One extra false move, and the Yankees would've given this one away. Torres represented the game's first narrative flip, and proved himself essential to the cause -- yet again.

That's, as Chris Kirschner noted on Monday, an .840 OPS from the leadoff spot in the Yankees' final 39 regular-season games. That's a 135 wRC+ career in the postseason, where 100 is a baseline average. And that's a player the Yankees can't afford to lose callously this offseason. Given that everyone knows Torres would prefer to stay, and probably wants an additional full season to reestablish his free agent value, do the Yankees dare offer their incumbent second baseman a one-year qualifying offer this offseason? If he accepts, that's $21+ million on the team's books for 2025. If he declines, that's an additional draft pick, but also a gaping hole filled by unproven youth.

It was an easy call in July, but it only gets tougher with every important playoff performance, in a run the Yankees hope lasts forever.

Yankees' Gleyber Torres could be given Qualifying Offer (pending hot run in MLB Playoffs)

Plenty of Yankees have beaten the odds in 2024. Luke Weaver rose from the ashes to become a fire-breathing closer. Alex Verdugo, who never should've started, then needed to start, and won Game 1 of the ALDS with a late-inning single. Luis Gil didn't need to be Gerrit Cole in April and May, but he was anyway.

Perhaps the Yankee who defied the odds the most powerfully, though, was Torres, who somehow struggled just enough to avoid being traded, then burst back onto the scene -- in an extremely prominent role -- at an ideal time. In an October where significant pressure will be placed on the shoulders of Aaron Judge, and significant angst will be attached to Giancarlo Stanton's bat (and footspeed scrutiny), Torres has a chance to continue to carry a team in need of stability through the season's showcase month.

If he does exactly that from atop the lineup, it'll be extremely difficult to justify handing his job to Caleb Durbin on Day 1 next year. Juan Soto will need to be consulted, of course, and Hal Steinbrenner will need to be prepared, but a one-year attachment no longer feels like a lame-duck marriage to a "losing player."

Of course, if his October ends the way we all hope it will, he could always decline it.