Yankees’ Gleyber Torres opens up about getting benched after dogging it on basepaths

Gleyber Torres admitted the obvious: He didn’t run hard out of the batter’s box, and manager Aaron Boone made the correct decision by benching him for most of Friday night’s 8-5 loss to the Blue Jays in The Bronx.

“I think he did the right thing, especially in the moment,” he said. “As a professional, you have to take the consequences.”

The second baseman only wound up with a single after his second-inning line drive hit the left-field fence, and he was later thrown out at the plate on Anthony Volpe’s double.

He would have obviously scored had he been on second base.

“For one second, I thought it was a homer. Unfortunately, it [was] just a single,” Torres said. “I have to get better. I feel really sorry for whatever I [did] tonight, especially for the fans and also for my teammates.”
Boone lifted Torres after three innings, keeping him in initially after the lack of hustle.

Boone’s reasoning was he wanted to give Oswaldo Cabrera time to prepare to enter the game.

“I just felt like in that moment I felt like I needed to do that. Simple as that,” said Boone, who declined to offer any specifics on the decision or the conversation he had with Torres when he took him out. “Hopefully this is a great learning moment for all of us.”

Torres will start on Saturday, according to Boone.

Captain Aaron Judge spoke to Torres, but didn’t want to share those specifics, either.

“Getting pulled in a game like that and for Gleyber to come back out, to be there on the front step, be at the fence cheering the guys on, speaks volumes of the type of guy he is deep down,” Judge said. “That’s a tough situation. … He could’ve ran and hid, saw you guys tomorrow. He was out there front and center.”

Asked about disciplining Torres for not running hard when other players have not been similarly punished for similar infractions, the Yankees manager grew testy.

“Everybody is going to make judgements on this guy, that guy. The reality is I have a ton of grace,” Boone said. “A lot of people don’t know the whole story on every situation and what guys are dealing with, and I think it’s one of the more overrated things – defining a player who plays hard or not.”