NEW YORK (AP) — Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres was removed Friday night from an 8-5 loss to Toronto by manager Aaron Boone for not hustling, sending a message to the clubhouse of a team that has struggled since mid-June.
Torres did not run hard out of the batter’s box on his 110.7 mph drive off the left-field wall in the second inning, thinking it was a home run, and reached only first base with a single. That cost the Yankees a run when he was thrown out at the plate trying to score on Anthony Volpe’s two-out double into the left-field corner.
Boone and Torres had a discussion on the dugout steps before the fourth inning as Torres tried to persuade the manager to keep him in the game. Oswaldo Cabrera took over at second base.
“I just felt like I needed to in that spot,” Boone said. “I’m not going to get too down the rabbit hole of making judgments on this one. I just felt like in that moment, I felt like I needed to do that. Simple as that. It is what it is. It’s over with. We’ve got to move on. He had I have spoken and hopefully this is a great learning moment for all of us.”
Torres was apologetic when speaking with media after the game.
“I think he did the right thing, especially in the moment,” Torres said of Boone. “I feel really sorry for whatever I (did) tonight, especially for the fans and also for my teammates. I’m a human being and I make an error and I feel like for whatever I do tonight, I’m going to learn a lot.”
Yankees captain Aaron Judge said Boone's message was received.
“If you’re not doing your job, you’re going to be out of there,” Judge said. “He’s made that clear to us and definitely made it clear today. If I know Gleyber, something like this ain’t going to happen again. He takes pride in his work, in his craft and he’s definitely not happy about what happened.”
A 27-year-old in his seventh major league season, Torres was an All-Star in 2018 and '19 but has struggled since. He is batting .233 with 10 homers and 42 RBIs, raising his average by hitting .250 in July.
Boone’s exchange with Torres was captured by a YES Network camera.
“Maybe it looked bad, but, it was a conversation, just tried to understand what happened in the moment,” Torres said. “I have to be more mature in that situation and just play hard.”
Boone said Torres will be in the lineup Saturday. He said he allowed Torres to play the field in the third inning because he didn't want to surprise Cabrera with a quick entry to the game.
Boone defended his decisions not to pull other players who haven't hustled.
“Everyone’s going to make judgments on this guy, that guy. The reality is I have a ton of grace, because a lot of people don’t know the whole story on every situation and what guys are dealing with," Boone said. "I think it’s one of the more overrated things defining a player that plays hard or not, is that part of it. It is a important part of it, but, yeah, we can go back and pull this one, why didn’t you pull on this one? The reality is those guys, including Gleyber, play their asses off.”
Judge credited Torres with owning up to his mistake, returning to the dugout to cheer for his teammates with the Yankees trailing and for speaking with reporters to admit he was at fault.
“It speaks volumes of the type of guy he is deep down.” Judge said. “He could have ran and hid and saw you guys tomorrow, but he was out there front and center.”
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New York Yankees' Gleyber Torres, right, is tagged out at home plate by Toronto Blue Jays catcher Brian Serven, left, during the second inning of a baseball game, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military said Tuesday an American activist killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing a strong rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the activist's family.
Israel said a criminal investigation has been launched into the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who was taking part in a demonstration against settlements. Doctors who treated Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, said she was shot in the head.
Blinken condemned the “unprovoked and unjustified” killing when asked about the Israeli inquiry at a news conference in London. “No one should be shot while attending a protest,” he said. “The Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way they operate in the West Bank.”
Eygi's family in the U.S. released a statement saying “we are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling.”
During Friday's demonstration, clashes broke out between Palestinians throwing stones and Israeli troops firing tear gas and ammunition, according to Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli protester who witnessed the shooting of Eygi.
Pollak said the violence had subsided about a half hour before Eygi was shot, after protesters and activists had withdrawn several hundred meters (yards) away from the site of the demonstration. Pollak said he saw two Israeli soldiers mount the roof of a nearby home, train a gun in the group’s direction and fire, with one bullet hitting Eygi.
Israel said its inquiry into Eygi’s killing “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by (Israeli army) fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.” It expressed its “deepest regret” at her death.
International Solidarity Movement, the activist group Egyi was volunteering with, said it “entirely rejects” the Israeli statement and that the “shot was aimed directly at her.”
The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests.
Israel says it thoroughly investigates allegations of its forces killing civilians and holds them accountable. It says soldiers often have to make split-second decisions while operating in areas where militants hide among civilians. But human rights groups say soldiers are very rarely prosecuted, and even in the most shocking cases — and those captured on video — they often get relatively light sentences.
The Palestinian Authority held a funeral procession for Eygi in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday. Turkish authorities said they are working on repatriating her body to Turkey for burial in the Aegean coastal town of Didim, as per her family’s wishes.
Eygi's uncle said in an interview with the Turkish TV channel HaberTurk that she kept her visit to the West Bank secret from at least some of her family members. She said she was traveling to Jordan to help Palestinians there, he said.
"She hid the fact that she was going to Palestine. She blocked us from her social media posts so that we would not see them,” Yilmaz Eygi said.
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp.
Several independent investigations and reporting by The Associated Press determined that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire. Months later, the military said there was a “high probability” one of its soldiers had mistakenly killed her but that no one would be punished.
In January 2022, Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American, died of a heart attack after Israeli troops at a checkpoint dragged him from his car and made him lie facedown, bound, temporarily gagged and blindfolded. The military ruled out criminal charges and said it was reprimanding one commander and removing two others from leadership roles for two years.
The U.S. had planned to sanction a military unit linked to abuses of Palestinians in the West Bank but ended up dropping the plan.
The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Human rights groups say Israel military investigations into Palestinians' deaths reflect a pattern of impunity. B’Tselem, a leading Israeli watchdog, became so frustrated that in 2016 it halted its decades-long practice of assisting investigations and called them a “whitewash.”
Last year, an Israeli court acquitted a member of the paramilitary Border Police charged with reckless manslaughter in the deadly shooting of 32-year-old Eyad Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian man in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2020. The case had drawn comparisons to the police killing of George Floyd in the United States.
In 2017, Israeli soldier Elor Azaria was convicted for manslaughter and served nine months after he killed a wounded, incapacitated Palestinian attacker in the West Bank city of Hebron. The combat medic was caught on video fatally shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who was lying motionless on the ground.
That case deeply divided Israelis, with the military saying Azaria had clearly violated its code of ethics, while many Israelis — particularly on the nationalist right — defended his actions and accused military brass of second-guessing a soldier operating in dangerous conditions.
Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s Gaza coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
This undated family photo provided by the International Solidarity Movement on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, shows Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle. (Courtesy of the Eygi family/International Solidarity Movement via AP)
ADDS WITNESS SAYS: Two fellow activists of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who a witness says was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers while participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank, carry posters with her name and photo during Eygi's funeral procession in the West Bank city of Nablus, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
