Jon Heyman joined Moose & Maggie for his weekly segment on Thursday, he admitted he was “shocked” about how the Yankees have looked overall in starting 6-11 for the first time since 1991.
“People around baseball still think the Yankees are an excellent team, they certainly are on paper, but I’m shocked. This is their worst start since 1991, and that team was terrible,” said Heyman, who covered that 1991 team for Newsday. “They stayed on that course. I do expect this team to play to the level of their track record, but the lineup is last in baseball in average and OPS, and their offense is terrible. It’s shocking how little they’ve hit – go up and down that list, and all of them are underperforming – and their fielding and base running haven’t been too good, either.”
On all of those tips, Heyman called last night’s situation with Gleyber Torres, where he didn’t hustle out of the box on a check-swing comebacker, “embarrassing” – and put the onus on both Torres and manager Aaron Boone to fix it.
“I like Boone, I think he has done a great job, but sometimes you need to get a little tougher. Sometimes in the press conferences, managers want to support their players, but at some point, you have to say something concrete,” Heyman said.
Boone said in that press conference that “any time you have that kind of situation when a guy gets off the mound, you gotta get after it,” but later defended Torres by saying he thought Gleyber wasn’t sure if it was a foul ball, but “that’s gotta be a little better, obviously.”
Torres confirmed Boone’s thought, and while he admitted that “I feel like I can put a little more effort running to first base,” he later posted a cryptic Instagram post about negative energy in his circle.
SNY’s Andy Martino proposed a radical solution of perhaps optioning Torres to the Alternate Site to send a message to both him and the team, and while Heyman didn’t necessarily agree – “they haven’t even benched him, so I’d be surprised if they optioned him,” he noted – he did get on both Gleyber and Boone for their thoughts.
“That was wrong what Torres did; he should be hustling out of the box. If you’re not sure, run!” Heyman said. “To me, Torres should be benched for the next game. (Boone) benched Frazier and Hicks for underperforming – they all are, but if you don’t hustle, you stand out. At some point you need to put the hammer down and do something that will affect him, not just say he could do better.”
Perhaps, too, the situation was summed up by one closing note from Heyman.
“On MLB Network a year or two ago, we were asked if we’d rather start a team with Torres or Juan Soto, and that question is almost funny now,” Heyman said. “It’s pretty amazing how far he’s fallen.”
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