Gleyber Torres got ultimate Yankees revenge with AL All-Star lineup reveal

Despite being the ones who asked for it in the first place, the New York Yankees have already pretty conclusively lost their bitter divorce with Gleyber Torres. The infielder has been revitalized in his first season with the Detroit Tigers, posting an .812 OPS for the team that currently boasts the best record in all of baseball. The Yankees, meanwhile, are in a dogfight for an AL playoff spot, hampered by an infield situation that ranks among the worst in the Majors.

Torres' exploits earned him the starting nod at second base for the American League team in this year's MLB All-Star Game. It also, at least temporarily, reunites him with Boone, who will manage the AL after guiding the Yankees to the World Series last season. All of which set the stage for one extremely awkward encounter on Monday afternoon, when Boone was forced to unveil his AL lineup ... with Torres' name at the top, a clear indictment of the one glaring flaw in New York's 2024-25 offseason.

Unfortunately, things somehow found a way to get more embarrassing from there. Boone was also, naturally, asked about Torres by assembled media, and had to fumble through an answer about how the second baseman has been a "tone-setter" for Detroit.

Torres producing on the field at exactly the position at which the 2025 Yankees could desperately use him is a bad enough look already. But Boone isn't just forced to eat crow about Torres as a player; he's forced to eat crow about Torres as a presence on and off the field, just months after he and GM Brian Cashman had finished taking thinly veiled (or some not-so-thinly veiled) shots at his character and his commitment to the team.

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AL All-Star lineup is just more proof that Yankees botched things with Gleyber Torres

Which to be fair, wasn't entirely unwarranted. Torres didn't cover himself in glory when New York asked him to move to third base in order to accommodate the newly acquired Jazz Chisholm Jr., and he was too-frequently guilty of errors of effort and IQ toward the end of his tenure with the Yankees. It's entirely understandable that the team and its fans were frustrated with him despite his above-average production overall.

But it's also worth stressing that Torres was still a solid player at a position at which the Yankees weren't exactly overflowing with those. Burning the bridge with him as quickly and thoroughly as they did once the offseason began was incredibly short-sighted, and it backfired in the worst way as the team's other options to buttress their infield dried up. Torres may not be perfect, but he was the best available choice and could've been had on an eminently reason short-term deal. Instead, the Yankees opted to cut off their nose to spite their face, and now they have to deal with the consequences.

Gleyber Torres sits atop stacked AL All-Star Game lineup

Torres is just the tip of the spear for what will be a very dangerous American League offense at Truist Park on Tuesday night. Here's how the rest of Boone's lineup shakes out, with his captain Aaron Judge hitting third and home run leader Cal Raleigh hitting cleanup.

First pitch of the 2025 MLB All-Star Game is set for 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, July 15. You can view the NL lineup right here.