{"id":27339,"date":"2025-01-18T22:38:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T22:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=27339"},"modified":"2025-01-18T22:38:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T22:38:34","slug":"yankees-signing-49-million-gold-glove-infielder-predicted-to-fill-torres-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=27339","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Signing $49 Million Gold Glove Infielder Predicted to Fill Torres Role"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-featured-container-id\">\n<div id=\"post-featured\">\n<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Yankees-Predicted-Sign-49-million-free-agent-replace-Torres.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 95vw, 780px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Yankees-Predicted-Sign-49-million-free-agent-replace-Torres.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780 780w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Yankees-Predicted-Sign-49-million-free-agent-replace-Torres.jpg?quality=45&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1100 1100w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Yankees-Predicted-Sign-49-million-free-agent-replace-Torres.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1350 1350w\" alt=\"Yankees Signing $49 Million Gold Glove Infielder Predicted to Fill Torres Role\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The New York Yankees lost faith in the second baseman who had held down the position for them since his debut in 2018, when he was named an American League All-Star and placed third in Rookie of the Year voting. That second baseman, of course, was Caracas, Venezuela, native Gleyber Torres, who gave the Yankees seven years and then found himself a free agent who did not even receive an offer from New York that might have kept him there.<\/p>\n<p>Torres went on to sign with the Detroit Tigers on a $15 million, one-year contract right after Christmas. So he\u2019s all set. But what about his former team? With 33 days remaining before live spring training competition gets underway, the Yankees still appear to have no plan to replace Torres in the middle infield.<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees showed \u201cinterest\u201d in Gavin Lux, the second baseman who was part of the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers team that denied the Bronx Bombers their 28th World Series title last October. But the reigning champions went ahead and traded Lux to the Cincinnati Reds instead.<\/p>\n<p>The defending AL champs were also reported to have held talks with Brendan Rodgers, a former Gold Glove infielder for the Colorado Rockies who entered the free agent market after Colorado declined to offer him a new contract rather than allow him a third year of arbitration eligibility. But those talks apparently went nowhere.<\/p>\n<h2>New Prediction Brings Korean Import to Bronx<\/h2>\n<p>A new prediction from <em>Fox Sports<\/em>, however, links the Yankees to another current free agent who would come at a higher price than either Lux or Rodgers would have \u2014 but a lower price than Torres. In this case, the projected price tag, according to the sports business site <em>Spotrac<\/em>, would be approximately $49 million over four seasons, an average annual payout of about $12.3 million \u2014 compared to the $15 million Torres commanded from Detrot. The player is former San Diego Padres second baseman Ha-Seong Kim.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Bronx Bombers need more guys who can get on base and create runs, and that\u2019s where Kim can come in and put his savvy baserunning to use. Plus, his excellent plate discipline (18.6 percent chase rate in the 98th percentile, per <em>Baseball Savant<\/em>) will do wonders if he\u2019s batting alongside Aaron Judge,\u201d wrote Fox Sports MLB writer Deesha Thosar. \u201cThe Yankees don\u2019t need more flashy free-agent signings now; they need a dynamic jack-of-all-trades Gold Glover like Kim who can quietly transform their offensive production.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kim won a Gold Glove at second base for San Diego in 2023. The South Korean import played seven seasons for the Kiwoon Heroes, a Korean Baseball Organization team based in Seoul (known for Kim\u2019s first five seasons as the Nexen Heroes) before signing with the Padres in 2021. He is also able to fill in at third base, having played 94 games there for the Heroes and another 79 over his four seasons with the Padres.<\/p>\n<h2>Kim Was a Better Player Than Torres Last Year<\/h2>\n<p>The leading Yankees fan blog Bleeding Yankee Blue has also predicted that Kim will end up with the Yankees, and the blog\u2019s writers have been on the Korean infielder\u2019s bandwagon for most of the offseason.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are we waiting for!\u201d they wrote on Frday. \u201cWhile everyone else is still scratching their heads, wondering which free agent infielder the Yankees might snag, we\u2019ve been over here at <em>Bleeding Yankee Blue<\/em> waving our \u2018Ha-Seong Kim\u2019 flags since early December.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kim compares favorably with Torres, as well. His Wins Above Replacement figure of 2.6 in 2024 was better than Torres, who accrued just 1,8 despite playing 33 more games than Kim. On a per-162-game basis, Kim outstripped Torres last season 3.5 to 1.9, meaning that Kim would represent a significant upgrade at a lower price<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently &#8220;Last of the Gladiators&#8221; published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/p>\n<h2>More Heavy on Yankees News<\/h2>\n<p>Loading more stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Yankees lost faith in the second baseman who had held down the position for them since his debut in 2018, when he was named an American League All-Star and placed third in Rookie of the Year voting. That second baseman, of course, was Caracas, Venezuela, native Gleyber Torres, who gave the Yankees [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Yankees Signing $49 Million Gold Glove Infielder Predicted to Fill Torres Role - NEWS USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=27339\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yankees Signing $49 Million Gold Glove Infielder Predicted to Fill Torres Role - NEWS USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The New York Yankees lost faith in the second baseman who had held down the position for them since his debut in 2018, when he was named an American League All-Star and placed third in Rookie of the Year voting. 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