Luis Torrens didn’t win a Gold Glove Award in 2025, but the thought of him even being named a finalist would have been preposterous at the start of spring training. After all, Torrens had only once played
enough games to qualify for the award, and that was way back in 2021 with the Mariners. He was penciled in as a backup backstop, an emergency stopgap acquired from the Yankees for cash considerations prior to the 2024 season. The fact that he played in 47 games with the Mets during their “OMG” playoff push seemed a Cinderella story in and of itself.
But in 2025, the Mets asked more of the 29-year-old Torrens. With Francisco Alvarez on the Injured List or in Triple-A for the majority of the season, Torrens was the team’s primary catcher, playing in 92 games and providing full-time defensive wizardry which earned him a well-deserved Gold Glove finalist nod.
Since arriving in Queens, Torrens has been a nightmare for opposing teams to navigate on the basepaths, throwing out runners at a 45% clip (the highest in the major leagues over that span). This season, Torrens caught 12 runners above the National League average, a mark which only J.T. Realmuto and Gabriel Moreno have matched during the Statcast era. With quality framing numbers and serviceable blocking, Torrens put together a superb, 94th percentile Fielding Run Value. The SABR Defensive Index, which accounts for 25% of the criteria in Gold Glove Award selection, gave Torrens the highest rating of any National League player not to win the award. If Giants catcher Patrick Bailey hadn’t posted the highest Fielding Run Value on record, Torrens would have likely taken home the hardware.
On the offensive side, Torrens’ end-of-season statline doesn’t jump off the page, with a .284 on-base percentage and .345 slugging percentage that actually sit below his 2024 marks. What does jump off the page is this: in 2025, the Mets’ top five leaders in OPS with runners in scoring position were Pete Alonso (1.035), Luis Torrens (.935), Brandon Nimmo (.888), Jeff McNeil (.862), and Juan Soto (.859). Your eyes do not deceive you. Luis Torrens’ OPS with runners in scoring position was almost 100 points higher than the superstar who just won his sixth Silver Slugger award.
Let’s put this apparent aberration in context. In the Mets’ 64-year history, no player with a total OPS that low has ever recorded a RISP OPS that high. Only six Mets have ever had a bigger difference between their total OPS and RISP OPS in the first place, a group including fellow catcher Devin Mesoraco in 2018. In other words, the magnitude of Luis Torrens’ transformation from an everyman into a superhero with runners in scoring position during 2025 was rarer in the scope of Mets history than a 30/30 season.
Torrens shouldn’t be counted on to replicate his clutch situational splits in 2026, but he won’t have to. He will enter spring training slated as the team’s backup catcher — a title for which he is certainly overqualified after racking up the 22rd-best fWAR among catchers in just 80 games at the position last season. If all goes according to plan, Torrens will start about a third of the Mets’ games behind the plate next season. But as Mets fans have come to know over the past 64 years, things rarely go according to plan.
For all the discussion and debate that will swarm talk radio this offseason about the Mets’ crowded position player troupe and controversial roster construction, credit is owed where credit is due: Luis Torrens is the perfect complement to Francisco Alvarez. Alvarez is young, electric, and still has the potential to win a Silver Slugger, but he’s injury prone and struggles to find consistency at the plate. Torrens is unfazed under pressure, elite behind the plate, and a reliable veteran presence (of the Mets position players under contract for next season, only Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Lindor debuted earlier than Torrens). Acquiring Torrens is one of the most under-appreciated moves of the David Stearns era, and Torrens himself is one of the most underrated Met weapons entering 2026.
