With champagne, beer and sweat running through his eye black, a drenched Alex Verdugo hooted and hollered as the Yankees partied after their ALDS win over the Royals on Thursday. Verdugo became a target for Yankees fans throughout his first — and possibly last — season in the Bronx, as the impending free agent’s poor production at the plate had the public clamoring for top prospect Jasson Domínguez. However, Domínguez didn’t appear in the Yankees’ first four postseason games after making a few mistakes in the outfield following a late-season callup. Instead, Verdugo started each ALDS contest in left field, an expected outcome for the steady defender after he and Aaron Boone had a conversation prior to the series. “This is what we kind of formed the team around when we started the year,” Verdugo said before Game 4. “When it’s time to really shine, really do something, I live for the stage and I love it. This is the kind of baseball that I want to be a part of.” While Verdugo only reached base once in the final three games of the series, Boone’s faith in the veteran paid off in Game 1. Verdugo went 2-for-3 with a walk in the opener, and his seventh-inning RBI single allowed the Bombers to start the ALDS on a winning note. After that game, Verdugo said that he understood why fans turned against him this season. After all, he had a .600 OPS after May 8. “I was booing myself too,” Verdugo said, but he added that teammates told him, “You can make up for a lot of things in the playoffs.” Verdugo, expected to continue starting in the ALCS, isn’t the only Yankee trying to rewrite his season’s story in what could be his final days with the team. Following some abysmal early-season production, Gleyber Torres has been a force at the plate ever since a late-June benching. However, his frequent errors in the field and on the bases drove fans mad throughout his walk year. Torres kept it clean in the field in the ALDS, though, and the leadoff hitter recorded a .400 on-base percentage while walking five times in the series. Torres added a two-run homer in Game 1, which made up for running into an out at the plate in the first inning, and he scored the first run of Game 4 after starting the night with a double. He also had an RBI single in the clincher. “As a player, it doesn’t matter if you have a really good year one year,” said Torres, one of baseball’s best offensive second basemen in 2023. “You have to do the adjustment on the next year because the league does the adjustments every day. I think that happened in the first half. “But since then, I did a little bit better in the second half and I still try to do good things for the team, especially now in the postseason.” Now in his seventh season with the Yankees, Torres has repeatedly said that he wants to stick around as free agency nears. Clay Holmes, another impending free agent in his fourth year with the Yankees, has made similar comments in the past. That may not sound appealing to fans that turned on the ex-closer as he tied a franchise record with 13 blown saves this season. However, the right-handed Holmes has not allowed a run since his last blown save on Sept. 19. That span includes five innings this postseason after the sinker-baller pitched in every game of the ALDS. “My confidence, my identity, who I am, and what I can do is not really so much tied into some title that’s given to me. Obviously, it’s an honor, it’s a great thing,” Holmes said of closing, “but for me, knowing who I am and what I’m capable of and trying to be the person I am, those things really weren’t stripped away. Some title kind of went away.”