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USATSI

Gleyber Torres hit free agency as a 28-year-old with a 38-homer season and a couple of All-Star appearances under his belt, but he had to settle for a one-year, make-good deal with the Tigers this offseason after a mightily disappointing final season with the Yankees. A career .266/.335/.442 hitter, Torres hit just .257/.330/.378 in his final season in the Bronx, with just 15 homers. And his landing spot in spacious Comerica Park did not exactly have expectations high for a bounce back.

But that's exactly what we've gotten. In fact, we might just be seeing the best version of Torres ever. He'll never come close to that juiced-ball-fueled 38-homer season in 2019, but Torres is hitting .304 through his first 29 games, with a strikeout rate less than half his career mark -- he's sitting a 8.6%, compared to a 19.9% mark for his career. 

How rare is this kind of improvement, even in a small sample size? I looked back at the 2021-2024 seasons through the same point in the schedule we are at and found just one player who had improved his strikeout rate by more than Torres – Luis Robert in 2022, who had a 13.3% strikeout rate compared to his career rate of 27.2%. Tim Anderson, also in 2022 – what was going on with the 2022 White Sox in April and May? – also had cut his strikeout rate by 11.3%, the same as Torres' mark. 

And how did Anderson and Robert fare the rest of the way? Well, it should come as little surprise, given their track records, that neither played enough to qualify for the batting title the rest of the way. But when they were on the field, neither sustained their improvements, either:

  • Robert: 21.5% strikeout rate in 311 PA
  • Anderson: 17.6% strikeout rate in 221 PA

Both marks were better than their career, which is good. But both regressed quite a bit from their hot starts, too, and they weren't alone. From 2021, there were 13 players who improved on their career strikeout rate by at least 7.5% to this point in the season, and of those, all but one saw their rest-of-season strikeout rate increase – the lone exception being Ronald Acuna in his incredible 2023 season. 

Now, there is some good news here. That group has an average strikeout rate of 25.6% for their careers, but for the rest of the season, it was just 22.5%. Some of that is Acuna's outlier results, but even if you remove him, this crew still improved on their career rates the rest of the season. But they also, collectively, hit significantly worse – on average, they had a .343 wOBA to this point in the season, compared to a .314 mark the rest of the way. Some, like Ryan McMahon in 2021, Ty France in 2022, and Josh Bell in 2022 were still good hitters the rest of the way, but there were plenty of collapses, too; Nolan Gorman went from a .408 wOBA to a .326 mark; Robert from .357 to .311; Anderson from .375 to .292; Jesus Aguilar went from .374 to .316. 

That's not to say Torres' hot start is definitely a fluke. It has come with some pretty significant changes in his approach, as Torres has become a much more patient hitter, cutting his overall swing rate to a career-low 41.5%, with his chase rate down to a 17.8% mark. Torres has always gone fishing out of the zone less than most hitters, but he's taking that to an extreme this season, with only six players chasing less often than him right now. And Torres has combined that with a career-best 84.4% in-zone contact rate, which is how you get this kind of significant decrease in strikeout rate.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that Torres is combining this with nearly the best quality of contact of his career His expected wOBA on contact is up to .412, Torres' best mark since he was a rookie. Improved plate discipline typically comes with reduced quality of contact, a balancing act players have been trying to solve for as long as baseball has been around. Pulling this trick off is incredibly hard – and that's a good reason to be skeptical of Torres' hot start.

He might just be the next Jurickson Profar, another player who had a mid-career breakout that seemed to defy explanation. But he might be the next Robert or Anderson. There isn't much evidence that Torres totally reworked his swing this offseason – his batting stance looks pretty much the same, and his swing speed is actually down from last year – so my best guess is he's just really locked in. 

And, it's worth noting that, because Torres missed a few weeks at the beginning of the season, his sample size is even smaller than most other players at this point in the season, as he has played just 29 games to date. And, while Torres' current production is impressive, it's not necessarily a total outlier for his career – he had a 29-game stretch in July and August of 2023 with an 11.7% strikeout rate and .387 wOBA, which isn't far from what he's done so far. And Torres obviously didn't sustain that success forever.

He probably won't sustain this current level of success moving forward, either. It's probably just a hot streak. It's an incredibly impressive hot streak and one that has put Torres back into the must-start discussion for Fantasy yet again. But I don't think we're seeing a new baseline for Torres moving forward. He's a sell-high candidate if you can get someone with a more projectable future.