Gleyber Torres hasn’t completely put his fielding woes of a year ago behind him.
After a mostly solid spring at shortstop, Torres, who committed a team-high nine errors last season, misplayed two balls in the Yankees’ 3-2 season-opening loss to the Blue Jays on Thursday.
Neither – correctly – were scored errors but both were plays a quality shortstop consistently makes.
Torres, 24, failed to get in front of Teoscar Hernandez’s scorched grounder to start the second inning, then stayed back instead of charging Hernandez’s chopper to start the ninth and his throw arrived late. Neither contributed to a run.
“The base hit in the hole (in the second), that’s kind of a do-or-die play,” Aaron Boone said. “I thought on the ball up the middle, just not an aggressive enough angle. Thought he laid back on the ball a little bit and probably, with Hernandez getting down the line a little bit (faster than expected), just needed to take a little bit better angle and a little more urgency to get that. Nothing more than that.”
Torres went 1-for-4 with a walk and a run scored. He struck out twice.
Kraken cracking early
Gary Sanchez stood out offensively and defensively Thursday, going 2-for-3, including a two-run homer, with a walk. Sanchez also worked well behind the plate with Gerrit Cole and threw out a base runner.
“It feels good to get going this way,” Sanchez, who slumped horribly down the stretch of spring training after hitting three homers early, said through his interpreter. “I’ve spoken about consistency before and I think I had that today in all the at-bats. And, also, behind the plate, I thought it was a good game.”
Lockdown pen
Yankees relievers (Chad Green, Jonathan Loaisiga, Darren O’Day and Nick Nelson) combined to allow an unearned run in 4 2/3 innings. They allowed three hits, struck out five and did not walk a batter.
