The New York Yankees are currently enjoying the services of Gleyber Torres, one of the best young shortstops in the game. However, have you wondered how the team acquired him and the trace behind the transaction? How many players were involved from the beginning?
It all started with Manny Banuelos, who was, back in the start of the 2010s, one of the hottest prospects in baseball. The New York Yankees signed him as an amateur free agent in 2008, and while his career once looked promising, injuries and ineffectiveness derailed his progress.
Banuelos was traded in 2015 to the Atlanta Braves for David Carpenter and Chasen Shreve. The former had a brief career with the Yankees, but Shreve was more effective for a longer time and netted the Bombers Luke Voit.
Later in 2015, on June 11, the Yankees traded Carpenter to the Washington Nationals for Tony Renda, who played just 33 games in MLB.
On December 28, 2015, the Yankees traded Renda, Eric Jagielo, Caleb Cotham and Rookie Davis to the Cincinnati Reds for Aroldis Chapman.
The Yankees made a tough, but worthwhile decision
Chapman was dominant for the Bombers, with 20 saves and a 2.01 ERA in 2016, but with the Yankees going nowhere and the Chicago Cubs making an offer that couldn’t be refused, the Cuban was traded to the Cubbies in their quest for a championship.
On July 25, 2016, the Yankees traded Chapman to the Cubs for Gleyber Torres, Billy McKinney, Rashad Crawford and Adam Warren. That was an incredible haul for the Yankees, but it’s hard for Chicago to regret the deal since they won the World Series.
“We knew we had a legitimate chance to win the World Series,” Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand in 2018. “And we also knew there were some things happening in our ‘pen where it was going to be obvious to everyone real soon that it was our Achilles’ heel. We didn’t think we could win the World Series without adding a dominant back-end guy. We tried a lot of different ways to do it without giving up a guy like Gleyber, but we didn’t have that opportunity. So that was a trade we made in order to win the World Series. A lot of us, before we hit the pillow every night, are thankful that we won the World Series so that we don’t ever have to look back on that trade with regret.”
In the end, Chapman found his way back to the Yankees and the two of them are currently teammates.