With Didi Gregorius off to Philadelphia, the Yankees have a new full-time shortstop: Gleyber Torres. We already got a preview of the 23 year-old phenom at the position early in 2019 while Gregorius rehabbed. Now, Torres is the shortstop for the long haul. Though Didi will be missed, the good news is that Torres is more than capable of handling shortstop, his natural position.

There’s no real reason to be excited about Torres defensively, at least not yet. Defensive metrics are nonplussed by his past performance at the position: Torres is +1 in defensive runs saved (DRS) and -4.7 in ultimate zone rating (UZR) in over 800 innings. It’s hard to make much of that — these metrics are a bit of a black box — but the eye test also seems to say that Torres is fine at short. Nothing great, but he doesn’t look like a poor defender by any stretch of the imagination.

Now though, we have yet another defensive stat at our hands: the newly released infield outs above average (OAA) over at Statcast. And in case you missed it, Bobby broke down the release on this here blog. Today, let’s take a look at how Torres fares in this more digestible and intuitive metric (at least, in my view).

Before digging into Torres, I want to highlight one thing about infield OAA that I like quite a bit. Not only does it evaluate defenders based on their lineup card position, but it also accounts for positioning. In other words, infield OAA is able to analyze Torres as a shortstop when he’s positioned as such — even if he’s listed as a second baseman in the box score. So, with shifts permeating today’s game, it only makes sense to grade fielders as such.

There’s a comfort level for everyone based on where they’re positioned, and based on OAA, it’s pretty evident that Gleyber is more comfortable in a traditional shortstop’s position. Mike Petriello discussed this in yesterday’s stat release, which inspired me to look into it further. Here’s the breakdown of listed position vs. standing position:

Outs above average by listing & position 2018 2019 Listed as SS, positioned as SS -4 0 Listed as SS, positioned as 2B 0 -1 Listed as 2B, positioned as SS +2 0 Listed as 2B, positioned as 2B -2 -4

Clearly, Gleyber has fared better on the left field side of second base. That’s to no surprise, either. He came up as a shortstop before deferring to Gregorius upon his big league debut. Now, these numbers positioned as a shortstop aren’t particularly impressive. They’re better than when he’s at the keystone’s area, but nothing more than average. No, Torres isn’t a gold glover (yet!). But perhaps most importantly, he’s not going to hurt the team out there.

Another nice thing about this new metric: it’s granularity. In particular, we can get a better grasp of what Torres excels and struggles with at shortstop. Look here:

Pre-play position Ending position

On the left, we see Torres’s performance based on pre-play positioning in the shortstop region. On the right, we can see how he did based on where he finished any given play. The one thing that stands out: Torres struggles to his backhand. See that blue box on the right picture? Sticks out like a sore thumb.

Torres isn’t alone in having difficulty going to the hole. 22 of 33 qualified fielders in 2019 — *positioned* as shortstops, but not necessarily listed as one — were below average fielding batted balls in that direction. Meanwhile, only 10 of those 33 were below average ranging up the middle. The backhand is more difficult and the numbers bear that out. And at just two outs below average going that direction, Torres isn’t exactly an abomination. For reference, Amed Rosario was the worst at -8 and Javier Baez was the best at +3.

Now for the good. Gleyber’s at his best ranging to his glove side. Positioned like a traditional shortstop, he was three runs above average going up the middle in 2019 (9th-best). Here’s a nice play Torres made to retire David Fletcher:

Good range and a strong throw to get the relatively quick Fletcher at first. Perhaps not the most difficult of plays, but certainly not routine. Moreover, it’s not a play a legendary shortstop of Yankees lore would have made, that’s for sure…

Past a diving Jeter.

…sorry, I couldn’t resist. All joking aside, there’s more to evaluating Torres at short than strictly looking at him alone. It’s important to compare him to the guy he’s replacing, too. The consensus is that going from Gregorius to Torres is a defensive downgrade. Seems pretty cut and dry, no? Gregorius has always had a great reputation in the field whereas Torres is a bit more of an unknown. Yet, Statcast says otherwise.

As strange as it sounds, going from Gregorius to Torres may be a defensive upgrade. Since 2017, Gregorius has been 22 outs below average when positioned as a shortstop. That…doesn’t seem right. And yet, he’s been at the bottom of the Statcast leaderboards annually. For what it’s worth, DRS is also down on Didi’s fielding and debited him seven runs since 2017. On the other hand, he’s at 12.4 UZR since then.

Charging grounders is the main reason why Statcast loathes Gregorius’s glovework. 19 of those 22 runs below average were on plays he moved in. But that’s not the only area in which Didi was rated inferior to Gleyber:

Player In Toward SS/3B hole Toward Middle Back Didi Gregorius -9 -1 -1 0 Gleyber Torres -1 -2 +3 0

Torres also had a leg up going up the middle. Both shortstops were even going back, while Gregorius has the advantage on the backhand. Overall, things are pretty close if you ignore grounders on the infield grass.

Even though the two aren’t particularly close defensively per OAA, I can’t say my opinion is changed about who I’d prefer defensively. Watching Gregorius field his position has been a joy for the past few years even if the numbers don’t bear that out. My preference isn’t a knock on Gleyber, however. In fact, I feel better about Torres taking over the position than I did before. To me, the more support we have that Torres is a capable shortstop, the better.

Ultimately, I’m not suggesting we take this new metric as gospel, but I can’t deny that it’s somewhat reassuring. I still think Gregorius’s surehandedness will be missed, but perhaps not as much as I was inclined to believe. That said, this is yet another data point that favors the Yankees’ trust in handing the positional keys to Torres.