Wildly simple adjustments have unlocked another level for Tigers' Gleyber Torres

When the Detroit Tigers signed Gleyber Torres over the offseason, it seemed to create an infield logjam. What the team really needed was a third baseman; however, whiffing on Alex Bregman to play the hot corner forced the team to pivot to Torres, a player somewhat famously resistant to the idea of playing third.

Signing Torres, a player who was summarily discarded by the World Series runner-up New York Yankees, and forcing promising 23-year-old Colt Keith off his position at second base, was a strange decision at the time. While Keith has struggled in the wake of Torres' arrival, the move has worked out better than any could have predicted.

Torres has surprisingly been lauded for his leadership on what is a very young squad. While his presence in the clubhouse certainly helps, his play on the field has propelled the Tigers to a major league best 40-21 record as of June 2.

Sporting a .269/.383/.407 line through 48 games, Torres has become the AL's best offensive second baseman by wRC+, and it's not even close. His 132 mark dwarfs the next man on the list (minimum 140 plate appearances): Jackson Holliday, who comes in at 118. Torres is behind only the Cardinals' Brendan Donovan for the big league lead.

How did a player who had become known for giving away at-bats, who this time a year ago owned a putrid .229/.310/.327 line, become the best offensive second baseman in the game? The answer lies in the fundamentals.

Little League fundamentals have taken Tigers' Gleyber Torres to new heights

The adjustments that have Torres shooting up the leaderboards began last season when he stopped thinking and started reacting, giving him the ability to better adapt to what he was seeing at the plate.

In 2025, he's taken that to another level, and that philosophy has manifested itself in a couple of different ways. Simply put, Torres is excelling because he's doing what every little leaguer is taught: wait for your pitch and shorten your swing to protect with two strikes.

This season, Torres has improved his swing decisions significantly. He's swinging at pitches outside the zone just 15.5% of the time, versus 25.5% for his career. In the zone, he's been more selective as well, spitting on tough borderline pitches and swinging just 63.2% of the time, as opposed to the 68.5% rate he's long carried.

That improvement in swing decisions can further be illustrated by his minuscule chase rate of 15.9% which is top of the league ranking in the 100th percentile. Furthermore, by only swinging at pitches in the zone that he feels he can handle, Torres is whiffing just 18.6% of the time, good for 82nd percentile.

That drastically improved plate discipline has allowed Torres to increase his walk rate substantially. He's walking 14.1% of the time, a 92nd percentile performance, and a significantly better rate than his 9.3% career average.

Typically, when walk rates rise, so do strikeout rates, as hitters get deeper into counts and face more two-strike pitches. For Torres, the opposite has happened. His K-rate this year has fallen to just 11.2%, down from a 19.9% career average.

He's gotten there by doing something that in today's game is earth shattering, but is taught in little league dugouts across the world -- shortening his swing with two strikes and taking the ball where it's pitched.

Though never an extreme pull hitter, Torres has cut down on his pull-rate significantly in 2025, dropping to just 30.8% versus his career average of 38.0%, with most of those balls he used to roll over weakly now being hit sharply back up the middle at a 40.4% clip (career average of 34.8%). While not drastic, he's also taken the ball the other way more often as well, posting a 28.8% opposite field contact rate versus 27.2% for his career.

Torres' ridiculously simple strategy boils down to looking for the perfect pitch to drive early in the count and laying off anything that he can't hit hard. As the count gets deeper, Torres then protects the zone by shortening up his swing, taking the ball where it's pitched and using the whole field, while still having the restraint to lay off tough pitches out of the zone.

It seems ridiculously simple, but in the era of launch angle and exit velocity, plate discipline and not trying to do too much has become something of a lost art. For Torres, it's become his bread and butter, as he's shown the requisite power to make an impact with the potential for more. This inference is based on a .557 xSLG that ranks in the 93rd percentile, which pairs nicely with Torres' ability to protect the zone and spray the ball all over the field when needed.

In short, Torres has taken an age-old, yet extremely simple approach, and utilized it to perfection to become one of the most productive hitters in the entire league.