One of my favorite aspects of spring training is the speculation about the upcoming season. We read, hear, and see all kinds of speculation about the league, the teams, and the players. Everyone is an expert. And, in this day and age (although I suspect it has always been so) everyone wants to be the first person to make an important point. The big time writers also fuel this by noting when they or their colleagues break big stories (“Judge out as first reported by Joe Writer and Mary Scribe @JoeWPost, @WriteMaryTimes”) as if that really matters in real time. Once the news is out, it’s out and the whole world is talking about it within seconds. Still, there is this desire, an insatiable desire, for everyone to be first. Somehow, it seems being first to a new story implies excellence or quality.
As part of this, writers also have this great desire to not only break stories but to be the one who makes a specific point. All writers do this. We speculate and hope to be correct.
All of this to say, it is this speculation and this desire to be the person who first makes an important point that makes Spring Training so much fun to follow. In their rush to get the big story out there, we find writers contradicting each other.
The case of Gleyber Torres’ prospects as a shortstop prove a great “point/counter point” to this. Below I link two articles, published on the same day earlier this week, one saying Torres will do poorly at shortstop, the other saying he’ll do just fine.
Take a look:
What does all that say? It says that no one truly knows how he will do. He might end up being terrible defensively or he might be fine. He might even become great.
Only time will tell.
Personally, I think Gleyber Torres is going to do a fine job at shortstop, given how it was his natural position as he was developing in the minors and there have been very few reports about his range/arm not being able to play there.
However, I still think there will be some adjustment period necessary for Gleyber and for us to get a full picture of what he would look like as a shortstop. His bat will play at the position, especially given the projections, yet I still hold that the Yankees should have kept him at shortstop as best as they could last season as to not mess with his defensive game.
Again, only time will tell.
