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Cubs: The Gleyber Torres-Aroldis Chapman trade looking better every day
In the wake of the Chicago Cubs winning the 2016 World Series, fans and pundits alike loved to re-hash the biggest trade the team made that season – trading a package of prospects headlined by Gleyber Torres to the New York Yankees in exchange for fireballing left-hander Aroldis Chapman.
Personally, I’ve always stood in favor of the deal. Parades > prospects, all day, every day. My mind won’t ever change on that front. But after the confetti stopped falling along the parade route and Chapman turned around and re-signed with New York, people wondered if the front office paid too high a price for that ring.
No one particularly worried about what Rashad Crawford or Billy McKinney, the other two prospects sent to the Bronx, along with veteran hurler Adam Warren, would turn into down the road. It was all about infield prospect Gleyber Torres – who had all the makings of a perennial All-Star and potential double play partner for Javier Baez.
At the time, Chicago was swimming in middle infield depth and Baez, along with Addison Russell, looked like the future. The Cubs also had Ben Zobrist for three more years as an insurance option, so Theo Epstein was content trading from an organizational position of strength.
But, as we know now, that depth quickly evaporated. Russell, who isn’t even part of an MLB organization at this point, wound up washing out following disturbing domestic abuse allegations, Zobrist saw his career cut short due to personal matters off the field and Baez has been consistently inconsistent for virtually all of his big league career.
Cubs watched Gleyber Torres break out in a big way in 2018
Less than two years later, Torres made his Major League debut with the Yankees, going 0-for-4 against the Blue Jays on April 22, 2018. In this instance, though, that was a first impression fans in the Bronx quickly got past.
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In his first full season with New York, Torres earned an All-Star nod, batting .271/.340/.480 with 24 home runs and 77 RBI en route to a third-place finish in AL Rookie of the Year balloting. It was more of the same in 2019, with the then-23-year-old mashing a career-high 38 home runs and driving in 90.
At that point is when criticism of the trade resurfaced in Cubs circles. That’s about the time the allegations against Russell surfaced, costing him the rest of his season – and the Chicago offense cratered late, as the team missed the postseason altogether for the first time since 2014. That led to the team and manager Joe Maddon parting ways and an aura of uncertainty settled over Wrigley Field.
Imagine what that lineup might have looked like with Torres in the mix. Could he have made a difference for Chicago? We’ll never know. But watching him put up a monster year in the Big Apple really irked some here in the Windy City – and started prompting more second-guessing of the blockbuster trade that sent him to the Yankees.
Cubs: Gleyber Torres is now drawing constant criticism from Yankees fans
Even when Torres was mashing for the Bronx Bombers, his glove has never rated out as above-average. For that matter, it hasn’t even been league average since his rookie season – and that problem has only seemed to get worse with time.
Here are his last four seasons (including both the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign and the 2021 season to-date) using Baseball Reference‘s dWAR:
- 2018: +0.9
- 2019: -0.6
- 2020: -0.7
- 2021: -0.1
Clearly, things aren’t getting better for Torres defensively. He’s moved between second and short just a bit, but with DJ LeMahieu signed long-term, he’s now the everyday shortstop. And to say his glove work has been shoddy is putting things mildly.
Last season, he made the fifth-most errors in the league and pretty much every defensive metric pegged him as a sub-par defender. The bigger concern for Yankees fans, though, is that it’s not the highlight reel-type plays that Torres is botching: it’s the routine ones you expect an everyday big league shortstop to make on a nightly basis.
Whatever the cause, his defensive woes have put him under the microscope of late. Simultaneously, he took a step backward with the bat last season, as well – although he still rated out as above-average using OPS+. Torres is off to a slow start in 2021, though, batting just .220/.333/.268 through his first 48 plate appearances.
dark. Next. Is the Chapman trade one of Theo Epstein's best with the Cubs?
Has the shine wore off the former Cubs top prospect? It’s sure beginning to feel that way. He’s still just 24 years old and has a lot of baseball left to play not just this year but in his career. But given the struggles of the last two years, Cubs fans can likely feel a little bit better about coming off Torres in the trade that ultimately netted them a World Series championship back in 2016.