What little things Yankees’ Gleyber Torres, Miguel Andujar are doing to amaze Neil Walker

Yankees’ Baby Bombers showed their selflessness while contributing an eighth-inning rally in Wednesday’s win over the Red Sox.

NEW YORK — Neil Walker was one of the heroes in the Yankees’ 9-6 comeback win over the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night with a leadoff double that keyed a four-run, eighth-inning rally, and his post-game interview included some bragging.

No, the switch-hitting veteran infielder wasn’t boasting about his hot bat.

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One of the things that really stood out to Walker about this Yankees win that gave them 17 wins in their last 18 games was what rookies infielders Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres did at the plate right after his double.

Walker loved seeing Andujar hit a groundball to second base to move him to third with one out and he was greatly impressed watching Torres patiently work with a walk to pass the baton to Brett Gardner, who followed with a triple that brought home the tying and go-ahead runs.

“It shows that whatever their mindset in the box is well beyond their years,” Walker said. “Andujar moved me to third on a 2-0 breaking ball. It would have been easy for him to just bail out and try to jump a fastball right there and hit a ball to the left side of the infield, but he didn’t do that. That’s something that doesn’t show up in a box score, but that’s something that’s extremely important.

“And Gleyber throwing up an at-bat to put the go-ahead run on first base. These are big-league, big-league at-bats guys are putting together at a very young age. It’s fun to watch because, for crying out loud, Gleyber is 21 years old and he’s throwing at-bats like that at Yankee Stadium in front of 50,000 people. It’s impressive.”

Neither Torres not Andujar was on the Yankees’ Opening Day roster, but both have been major contributors since being called up from Triple-A.

Andujar was summoned in for the second game of the season to do some DHing after center fielder Aaron Hicks went on the DL, then within a week he was starting at third base due to Brandon Drury going on the DL.

Heading into Thursday’s Yankees-Red Sox series finale, Andujar was hitting .272 with three homers and 13 RBIs in 29 games, stats that already may be good enough to prevent Drury from starting when he returns.

Meantime, Torres was hitting .333 with two homers and 11 RBIs in 17 games since being called up on April 22 to take over as the starting second baseman.

Torres’ fielding, intelligence and maturity have greatly impressed the Yankees, too. 

“Baseball IQ, sometimes you have it or you don’t,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of Torres. “He does a lot of things instinctively on the baseball field that are just rare, that are special traits.

“It shows up a lot on defense, shows up in the (batter’s) box. He obviously plays the game with a lot of confidence and a belief that he absolutely belongs here and will have success here. It’s been a lot of fun watching him come into his own now up here in a very short amount of time.”

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