TAMPA — What if, at this time last year, I had told you that Anthony Volpe, with barely a pit stop at Triple-A, was going to win a spring training battle against Oswald Peraza for the starting shortstop job en route to becoming the third rookie shortstop ever to record at least 20 homers and 20 steals and the first Yankee rookie at any position to win a Gold Glove?
Any Yankee fan or official would have signed up for that.
Because so much of what we think about anything is how we tell the story. What we include. What we omit. The tone. The timing. The words — you can call someone bold or pushy for the same behavior and paint opposite pictures.
So there is a way to deliver the Volpe major league origin story as a success. Except the person around the Yankees not buying that version at the highest level is named Anthony Volpe.
“You can cherry pick anything you want from last year, but for me that was way, way, way below what I expect from myself,” Volpe said.
If you want to expect a better Volpe in 2024, this is probably the place to start. With Volpe. But also if I wanted to make this a fully New York tale, with Francisco Alvarez too. Because they had similar rookie seasons. Both were generally viewed as top-10 prospects. Both came to The Show young and with little Triple-A seasoning. Both play vital middle-of-the-diamond positions. Both had reputations as bat-first prodigies. But both hit .209 and actually impressed with defense that was better than touted.
But what was most memorable — at least for me — is how their veteran teammates felt about them. There was pretty much universal praise for their seriousness, for their team-first natures, for their maturity in handling first-year difficulties. Teammates talked about them with admiration, in a real-knows-what-real-looks-like kind of way.
It is the strongest reason why, if Volpe and Alvarez were stocks, I would invest. I think they will graduate toward their better offensive projections, yes, while also growing over time into team leaders.
“The word that comes to me [about Volpe] is passion,” Jose Trevino said. “Passion for his craft. Passion for his teammates. Passion for being the New York Yankees shortstop. I know this kid wants to be the best — he works every day to be the best. It’s fun to watch. I’m glad I have a front-row seat.”
In a different time — under a different Steinbrenner — Volpe would have been demoted at some point during a season in which his 81 OPS-plus was eighth worst among qualifiers and his 27.8 strikeout rate was 13th worst. That Volpe never was probably offers more truth about what the Yankees actually think about Peraza than any of their public statements. But also was a reflection of what they think about Volpe’s makeup. That he could handle this.
The Yanks liked the defense, power and speed, a collection good enough to make him a 3.3 WAR player on Baseball Reference, but only 1.9 on Fangraphs — another reflection that you can pick and choose when storytelling; also how ludicrous it is that a metric so widely cited has different equations. The Yanks also liked that Volpe did not succumb.
The whole offense pretty much cratered. Brian Cashman, for the first time in a quarter of a century as Yankee GM, fired a coach during a season, dismissing hitting coach Dillon Lawson at the All-Star break. Volpe seemed the poster child for the overzealousness of a one-size-fits-all theory of pull it in the air. His swing got long and uphill and exposed him particularly to breaking balls away and heat upstairs.
But, again, here Volpe looks in the mirror, not for scapegoats. He references that Lawson was his minor league hitting coordinator and says, “Under no circumstances was this about [Lawson].”
Still, trying to make radical changes in swing/approach when there is a game daily is difficult, So Volpe went to the laboratory in the offseason, beginning workouts at the Yankees minor league facility in early January. New hitting coach James Rowson said Volpe is “not working as uphill as he was and is working more through the ball.” Rowson believes that will decrease the holes in his swing, which combined with Volpe’s strong concept of the strike zone should lead to more walks and more opportunities to use his legs.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Maybe what Volpe showed last year was not a first step, but just who he will be in the majors. The Mets, for example, kept waiting for Amed Rosario to graduate to better stuff that never manifested full time. Major League Baseball is tough. It’s just that if Volpe doesn’t improve it is going to leave a clubhouse shocked, such is the belief in the relentless hunger to get better that those in uniform see.
“One of the reasons we went with him as the Opening Day shortstop last year is because beyond the talent we felt he had the ‘It’ quality,” Aaron Boone said.
One year later, the reason to bet on a jump for Volpe is that part of the story remains unchanged.
