New York Yankees: Scouting Report On SS Gleyber Torres

Scouting Report

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Body/Basics

Torres is listed at 6’1 and 175 pounds, though he’s filled out some coming into the 2016 season, and I’d wager he’s probably more accurately about 185 pounds now. He’s a right-handed hitter and thrower from the shortstop position.

Hitting

Torres has a busy set up at the plate, with a lot of movement in his body and bat. This leaves him in some issues with hard breaking stuff, and you can see it in the high strikeout numbers he’s had in his career. He does have good zone judgement in general, but the movement in his set up makes it tough for him to work with breaking stuff in the zone at times.

Torres does well leveraging his swing, and he’s grown into his body in the last year to give him much more power in his frame. I could see him becoming a legit 20-homer guy with his growing frame, but the movement to get to the ball is an issue, and I fear that he could get to leveraging too much into the swing trying to get even more power and lose the present contact skills, which are about a 5.5 on a 20-80 scale.

Base Running/Fielding

Torres had a reputation of being a big time runner coming over the U.S., but that has certainly not been the case. He’s certainly fast, but his instincts are not very good, as evidenced by the fact that he’s only been successful on 61% of his stolen base attempts thus far in his minor league career. He does have excellent speed, however, so if he can be taught more, he could at least be solid as a base runner if not a base stealer.

In the field is where it will be an interesting discussion. The Yankees have another highly regarded shortstop prospect, Jorge Mateo, who is also at high-A Tampa with Torres since the trade. The Yankees have moved Mateo to second base, and that’s honestly a position I thought he’d end up at in the future due to exceptional range but an arm with quick release but not the strength you’d like in the 5.5 hole between short and third.

Torres has the opposite issue. He has all the arm one could possibly want in the position. His first step, though, is not fluid, and often he ends up missing balls that a good shortstop should get to. That said, he has excellent glove skills on the balls he gets to, and that arm is very nice, to say the least. I honestly could see Mateo at 2B and Torres at 3B long-term with the Yankees still looking for a shortstop!

Video

Next: Future outlook