Can Anthony Volpe Get His Carrying Tool Back?

As somebody who watched almost every single Anthony Volpe defensive play this year, I can confidently say that for a lot of the season, he didn’t look comfortable attacking the ball. What I mean by that is this: In his couple of steps right before fielding the ball, he didn’t look like he was moving in rhythm. He led the AL with 19 errors, 13 of which came while throwing.

Last season, he was one of the best defenders in the sport. What he lacks in top-end athleticism and arm strength he made up for with supreme footwork, instincts, and pace. He doesn’t have the luxury of a rocket arm, making all those features even more important. This season, the quality of his footwork around the ball was inconsistent and led to mistakes on plays he made consistently through the first two seasons of his career, both with his glove and the accuracy of his arm.

Some of Volpe’s defensive woes could be related to his health. He played through what was later revealed to be a partially torn labrum in his left shoulder, an injury that occurred on May 3, when he felt a pop in the joint while diving for a ball against the Rays. He finally received a cortisone shot to address the injury on September 10, more than four months later. Only three of his 19 errors came before he hurt his shoulder, and he didn’t make an error in his 12 games after returning to the field from the shot. Although the injury wasn’t to his throwing arm, it still could have affected his throws. Shortstops use their left arm as a stabilizer to lead them in the correct direction while throwing. Think of the basic mechanics you’re taught as a kid: Point your glove at the target, step at the target, then throw the ball. If your non-throwing shoulder is hurt, you may not be able to use it to properly begin the mechanics for an accurate throw. Many times, shortstops are fielding the ball while moving and don’t have time to plant their feet and step directly toward first base before releasing the ball. In these instances when the lower half of the body is neutralized some, it’s even more important to have a healthy non-throwing arm to direct the ball. That’s especially true for shortstops like Volpe who don’t have strong throwing arms and rely on a quick release to compensate. There’s no way to know how much the shoulder was bothering him, but that is likely how it would have hindered his play.

If the shot did the trick, and if the shoulder truly was the primary cause for Volpe’s poor fielding, then the Yankees should be in a much better position entering the postseason, when making one play could mean the difference between advancing and getting eliminated. He’ll be at shortstop tonight at 6:08 p.m. ET, when the Yankees host the Red Sox in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium.

With all that in mind, let’s break down Volpe’s defensive season to get an understanding of what went wrong and how, maybe, it could all be going right again at the most important time of the year.

At this point, we should all know that defensive metrics can be volatile, but data volatility alone isn’t always an explanation for a shift in defensive performance. Rather, the metrics can tell us a lot about why performance is changing, especially if they align with what our eyes are telling us. So let’s begin with the metrics for Volpe over his first three seasons in the majors:

There is some disagreement between OAA and DRS, but the general consensus is that Volpe was either above average or very good defensively during his first two seasons. Anecdotally, I completely understand how the metrics have fallen this way. He wasn’t quite at the caliber of Bobby Witt Jr., whose raw physical ability is much higher than that of Volpe, but the Yankees shortstop was making play after play in every direction despite some of his weaker tools. This season, though, he is no longer getting outs on balls that he did during his first two seasons:

Considering his below-average arm strength, it makes sense that Volpe previously wasn’t as good when going back on balls or moving toward third base — even though he was generally still making the plays — as these require shortstops to get more oomph on their throws. For that reason, I assumed these plays would be the source of his 2025 fielding woes. And yes, he was at his worst this season when moving away from first base, but his performance on these plays suffered only a minor decline compared to previous years. Instead, his defense dropped off significantly in the two areas that once were his greatest strengths: Coming in on balls and when moving to his glove side.

Up top, I mentioned Volpe’s lack of aggression when coming in on the ball. That plays a direct role here. To make these plays in front of you or toward first base, you have to attack the balls with pace and directional efficiency. Your footwork has to be quick and decisive while flowing into your throw. That wasn’t the case for Volpe this year:

The first two low throws above aren’t awful, in the sense that a first baseman better than Ben Rice probably would’ve scooped them while keeping his foot on the base, but also they aren’t easy hops to handle, especially when you consider that Rice is a converted catcher still learning the ropes at first. Regardless, these are relatively routine groundballs for Volpe, and he should have plenty of time to make accurate throws — they should be right at Rice’s chest. On the first play, Volpe is moving around the ball cleanly until he makes his final approach, when he halts momentarily to field the ball and causes his feet to stagnate. That pause directly impacts the direction he has created by rounding the ball. He then opens up his hips too early and loses all true spin on his throw. The stagnation in the final two steps was a common trend this year.

In the second clip, featuring a gliding grounder from Edgar Quero, Volpe stops right before fielding it and can’t work through the ball smoothly, which stiffens his glove. The chopper off the bat of Yandy Díaz in the third video above is oddly handled as well. Volpe has more time to work through the ball before coming set to make the throw because Díaz is not a fast runner; however, as Volpe slows down, he changes his posture multiple times and loses control of his body. He rises up too tall just before releasing the ball, costing him some juice on the throw and providing Rice with a difficult short hop across the diamond.

Then, in the final two videos above, Volpe just largely lacks the pace that we’ve become accustomed to seeing from him. The skimmer off the bat of Myles Straw is the exact type of play where shortstops get to show off how smooth they are. They maneuver their body toward first base as the grounder is approaching, allowing them to release the ball quicker. Instead, Volpe fields the ball with his body angled toward home plate; by the time he comes up, goes through his motion, and throws the ball, it is too late to get the speedy Straw. You can also see Volpe’s hesitancy on the big chopper. He waits until the high hop comes to him, again missing out on valuable time to throw out the runner. Shortstops with rockets like Elly De La Cruz and Masyn Winn can afford to sit back on these balls, but Volpe doesn’t have the arm strength to get away with it.

Now let’s focus on plays where Volpe is moving toward first:

See how he’s taking very, very large steps as he’s shuffling? These huge movements are putting him off balance and falling forward. When moving laterally or when coming in on the ball, he should be breaking down his steps as he approaches the ball; doing so allows infielders to be more dynamic and in control of their motions, helping them adjust to sudden hops or directional changes of the grounder. Longer steps and bigger shuffles make it far more difficult to change directions because there is more momentum going into each movement.

The throwing error to first on the Leo Jiménez grounder is a good example of that. On this, and really all the throws we’ve seen thus far, Volpe needs to regather himself after fielding the ball to make his throw because he isn’t in a good position to deliver a strong one. The only way he is able to come out of these positions and make a throw is by adding more shuffles, which also isn’t ideal because it adds more time to complete the play. Knowing that he doesn’t want to take too long, he ends up rushing his throw from a suboptimal position, causing his hips to open up too early, his arm slot to drop, and his throws to sink and bite at angles that make for tricky pick plays for first basemen. An injured non-throwing shoulder might’ve made things worse here because he couldn’t stabilize his body and direct his throw with his lead arm.

I initially did a lot of the research for this piece before he received the cortisone shot and sat out for five days. At the time, he was at -8 OAA. He ended the season at -6. Yes, that was a small sample of games and fielding opportunities, but it is promising that he picked up 2 OAA after addressing his injury. Here’s how Volpe has looked over the past two weeks: