Yankees' Gleyber Torres to DL | What it means

Yankees star rookie Gleyber Torres will go to the disabled list with a right hip strain.

NEW YORK — The news was much worse than Yankees manager Aaron Boone expected.

When star rookie second baseman Gleyber Torres was taken out of Wednesday’s 6-2 win over the Braves on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, Boone hoped that the MRI Torres was taking for his tight right hip would show up clean.

Nope.

The test revealed a mild strain, Boone said, and the Yankees felt forced to put the 21-year-old on the 10-day disabled list.

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How did it happen? Boone said he wasn’t sure, but he pointed out that Torres went hard on the bases several times over the weekend. The Yankees held the former top prospect out of Tuesday’s starting lineup but used him as a late-game defensive replacement. Torres started Wednesday. The Yankees pulled him before the start of the fifth inning because he started to feel the tightness again and was noticeably in discomfort in a fourth-inning at-bat.

When will he be back? Boone hoped it would be a “short stint” for Torres and that he could return perhaps just after the All-Star break. Boone said it might have been possible for Torres to play through if it were later in the season. “Any time you’re thinking about groin, hamstring, quads — once you have a strain in there, if you push through it could make it a worse strain, and then you’re talking weeks and months and stuff like that,” the manager said.

What are the Yankees’ options: Neil Walker will get “the bulk” of time at second base, Boone said. The team hasn’t decided whom it will call up to take Torres’ place on the 40-man roster. It could be Tyler Wade, who won the starting second base job out of spring training but hit poorly in April and got sent down. Since June 1, Wade has hit .317 with two homers, seven RBI and a .835 OPS in 30 games at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Brandon Drury will start working out at the position before games. Drury was the Diamondbacks’ full-time second baseman in 2016 and 2017. Ronald Torreyes is on the minor-league temporarily inactive list.

Torres’ All-Star case: He might still get consideration for his remarkable start. He’s hit .294 with 15 homers, 42 RBI and a .905 OPS through his first 63 major-league games. But missing the next two weeks could hurt.

Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on Facebook.