Anthony’s Movin’ Out

A year ago Sunday, Anthony Volpe went down in a heap after diving for a grounder in the 5-6 hole. The Yankee shortstop felt a pop in his non-throwing shoulder, but he stayed in the game, and imaging didn’t turn up anything untoward.

At least not in the moment. The shoulder nagged Volpe for the rest of the season, and after the Yankees’ ALDS loss to Toronto, he went in for surgery to repair a partially torn labrum. Shoulder surgery has a long timeline for rehab — even when performed on the non-throwing shoulder of a position player — so Volpe missed all of spring training. He reported to Double-A for a rehab assignment on April 14, and when his 20 days were up, the Yankees activated him… and optioned him straight to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Volpe was the Yankees’ Opening Day shortstop in 2023. Over the next three seasons, he appeared in 493 of their 507 regular-season and playoff games; on 476 of those occasions, he was the starting shortstop.

Under any circumstances, the demotion of a three-year incumbent starter would be major news. All the more so here because of the messianic hype that has surrounded Volpe.

In retrospect, maybe it was a bad idea for the New York baseball world to get over its collective skis on Volpe. A first-round pick, an Italian American kid born in Manhattan and raised in North Jersey, a lightning-quick shortstop who hit .309 in spring training to claim the starting shortstop job at age 21 — you could hardly blame the Yankees and their coterie for being excited.

But just in case anyone was tempted to let slide potential comparisons to Derek Jeter, the Yankees — who have taken more numbers out of circulation than a crooked roulette croupier — gave Volpe the lowest uniform number left in circulation. Anything short of Jeterian greatness would be viewed as a failure.

In three years, Volpe hasn’t been terrible. In 2024, he posted an 87 wRC+ that, buoyed by 28 stolen bases and excellent defensive metrics, made him a 3.5-WAR player. Shortstops who consistently play elite defense, steal double-digit bags, and are only kind of crappy at the plate — those guys play a long time. Elvis Andrus is a folk hero in Texas.

But that doesn’t fly for the Yankees. More than that: My approach to player evaluation is measured and holistic, probably to a fault. And if you came to me and tried to explain why it’s actually good that a guy with a .222 career batting average and a .283 career OBP is a nailed-on starter for my favorite team, I’d turn you upside-down and give you a swirly. Yankees fans can be A Lot, but they were right to demand better.

Especially because, at this moment, the Yankees have a better option at shortstop.

I don’t think José Caballero is a star or anything; he’s a journeyman who’s bounced among franchises that have needed productive infield play. His assets are obvious — he’s stolen 28 bases in 73 games with the Yankees, and he runs hot and cold at the plate. Shortly after joining the Yankees last year, he had a four-game stretch in which he went 7-for-15 with two home runs and four steals. Fans remember that, and forget that he went 2-for-21 over his next 15 games. Caballero is sixth out of 179 qualified hitters in WPA this season, but 111th in wRC+.

Still, he is playing well, and the Yankees (currently 23-11, but only 1.5 games ahead of the second-place Rays) are in a position where any present advantage must be pressed to the fullest extent. Sentimentality is not currently a major motivator. If Caballero is the best man for the job — and he seems to be, at least for now — he ought to play full-time.

Where does that leave Volpe? Is this demotion the end of his run in the role to which he’d ascended with such fanfare? After all, he’s coming off three full seasons without breaking a wRC+ of 90 even once. I don’t care how hyped he was as a prospect, that’s a lot of rope to give anyone.

Having said that, I’d be absolutely astonished if Volpe never reclaimed the Yankees’ starting shortstop job. He was pretty terrible last year: .212/.272/.391, 83 wRC+, 1.0 WAR. He gave back about two wins’ worth of value, relative to 2024, in defense and baserunning.

But he also reworked his swing for 2025. He increased his fast-swing percentage from 3.7% in 2024 to 28.6% last year. His average bat speed went up 3.3 mph, the second-largest year-on-year increase, after Brice Turang. (Hey, did Turang make any notable strides at the plate in 2025? I can’t remember.) Volpe also dropped his GB/FB rate from 1.75 to 0.94, and his chase rate from 29.1% to 23.8%.

I think there’s a nuanced conversation to be had about whether it’s a good idea for a small guy with plus speed to go full-on swing-plane revolution, especially when his strikeout and walk numbers weren’t that good to start. But it’s undeniable that Volpe was trying to do more damage last year; he just didn’t get rewarded.

Volpe ran a .252 BABIP in 2025, a drop of 51 points from the year before. That’s got something to do with hitting more balls in the air (and fewer line drives), but it’s still indicative of bad luck. So is the fact that he increased his xSLG by 70 points from 2024 to 2025, but only got 27 extra points of real-world slugging percentage out of it. His results were almost the same over his past two full seasons in the majors, but he deserved better last year.

The second reason I’d expect Volpe to come back strong after a terrible 2025 campaign is the shoulder injury. He played the last five months of the season with an unsound joint that turns out to be quite important for swinging a bat. Based on health alone, he has to be better now.

Obviously, I don’t expect a healthy Volpe to show up immediately and play like Jeter. Neither do the Yankees, or else they wouldn’t be wasting those at-bats in Lackawanna County.

But even after almost 500 games and 2,000 plate appearances in the majors, Volpe is still a hugely talented ballplayer who only turned 25 last week. He ought to get time behind the scenes to refine his swing and approach with a fully healthy body. Getting the best out of Volpe in the long term is incompatible with returning him to New York now. The Yankees’ hot start — and Caballero’s contributions thereto — has given them the luxury of playing their best shortstop in the majors while simultaneously sending Volpe back to the lab.

He’ll be back, sooner or later, and without the weight of the world on his back.