How Yankees’ Gleyber Torres blew game after being robbed by blanket thief CC Sabathia

Rookie second baseman cost the Yankees’ two runs with his defense during Friday night’s 5-2 loss in Kansas City.

KANSAS CITY — The Yankees spent all of Wednesday night and a lot of Thursday morning waiting on an idled plane at Washington Dulles International Airport.

Left-hander CC Sabathia doesn’t recall much of the Yankees’ excruciating wait to get out of DC for a weekend series in Kansas City because he was crashed out most of the time in his seat.

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His one memory is waking up in the middle of the night and noticing some of his teammates were gone many hours after the Yankees and Washington Nationals were rained out.

Feeling chilly, Sabathia looked around and noticed rookie second baseman Gleyber Torres sleeping in a nearby seat with one of those cheap plane blankets wrapped around him.

And then …

“I stole a blanket from Gleyber,” Sabathia said. “I feel bad. I saw the blanket and I shuffled it off him and went to sleep.”

Was this bad karma?

Probably not, the Yankees lost their first game in three days 5-2 to the Kansas City Royals on Friday night with Sabathia allowing two early runs on miscues by Torres, who normally is a defensive whiz.

When Torres dropped a one-out, runners-on-the-corners popup behind second base in the first inning, he picked the ball up and threw to shortstop Didi Gregorius at second for a force out … but the Royals were gifted a run on the play.

Two innings later, the Royals were still up 1-0 when Torres botched a routine three-hopper with the bases loaded and two outs. This error scored a run, another scored when Sabathia walked the next hitter and the Yankees were on their way to losing.

 If you’re thinking maybe Torres was still recovering from a long night on the plane, he says no. He says that he slept well and was further rested up due to Thursday’s off day.

“I scored a run for the other team and CC threw more pitches (after the third-inning error),” Torres said. “I feel bad for that. But that happened in the game and I’ll prepare for (Saturday) and any groundballs (hit to second base), I’ll try to make outs.”

The Yankees obviously aren’t down on Torres, who mostly has been brilliant since his ballyhooed April 22 call-up from Triple-A as one of baseball’s top prospects.

“He’s a great player,” Sabathia said after allowing two earned runs and two unearned ones in a five-inning outing that resulted in his first loss of the season. “He’s been great defensively for us. He’s been everything we asked. I look for him to bounce back (Saturday) and be himself.”

As for Sabathia stealing his blanket, Torres shrugged when hearing of it for the first time during his post-game interview. He has no memory of the thievery because he was fast asleep at the time.

Sabathia wishes he instead would have awakened earlier and headed to an airport lounge to take one of the eight of so recliner chairs there.

“I could have stretched out a little bit,” he said. “Sleeping on a plane was not good. It was the worst night I had in the big leagues. That was bad.”

And on Friday night, Gleyber Torres, very uncharacteristically, was bad, too.

“It happens,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s baseball. Good defenders are going to do that every now and then.”

Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RandyJMiller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.