By Brendan Kuty, Cody Stavenhagen and Will Sammon
Gleyber Torres and the Detroit Tigers agreed to a one-year, $15 million contract, a team and league source confirmed Friday. Torres, 28, is a free agent coming off a strange 2024 season.
Through his first 86 games with the New York Yankees last season, Torres was dreadful offensively, hitting just .221 with eight home runs, 33 RBIs and a .638 OPS. He was also pulled out of game after not running hard on a ground ball.
But over his final 68 games, he looked more like himself, posting a .298 average with seven home runs, 30 RBIs and a .788 OPS. Through the first 11 games, including Game 1 of the World Series, Torres hit .310. Then he stumbled (1 for his last 16) as the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Yankees in five games.
Torres also had a poor season defensively. He lead all MLB second baseman in errors with 18. The Tigers’ Colt Keith had the second-most with 12. He posted a minus-7 Outs Above Average — second-to-last among qualified second basemen, according to Fangraphs.
Torres was once considered a future star. He was a highly regarded prospect with the Chicago Cubs, who traded him to the Yankees as part of a package that landed them Aroldis Chapman in 2016. Before the 2018 season, Baseball America ranked Torres the No. 6 prospect in the game, and he was an All-Star in 2018 and 2019 — his first two seasons.
But a move to shortstop in 2020 started his slide. Over the next two seasons, he showed he wasn’t able to handle the position defensively, and it affected his offense. Since the start of the 2020 season, he’s posted just a 107 OPS+.
To Torres’ credit, he’s mostly stayed on the field. He’s played at least 140 games four times in seven big-league seasons.
A reunion with the Yankees always seemed unlikely. The club had floated Torres’ name in trade talks each of the last few seasons, and many fans had their patience worn thin with his sloppy glovework, bad base running and inability to live up to the hype he generated when he first broke into the majors.
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(Photo: Wendell Cruz / USA Today)
