Anthony Volpe’s return from shoulder surgery will probably be judged in extremes. If he comes back looking like the polished two-way shortstop Yankees fans once imagined, every line drive, diving stop, and stolen base will reignite the belief that a true breakout might finally be here.
If the offensive line remains parked where it has spent too much of the last three seasons, the familiar frustrations around strikeouts, on-base percentage, and whether the bat will ever fully arrive will return quickly.
The truth, as usual, likely lives somewhere in the middle.
That is what makes Volpe’s 2026 campaign so fascinating. This is less about whether he can suddenly become the star many once hoped for and more about what a healthy, age-25 Anthony Volpe should realistically look like. For Yankees fans, that means separating three different buckets: what to expect, what to accept, and what to hope for from Volpe.
What to expect: Volpe returns as the Yankees’ shortstop
When the Yankees bring Volpe back up to the big league club, it will not be as a bench player. Barring a setback, he is rehabbing to resume being the club’s everyday shortstop. Fans may debate it, but that is the organization’s plan. Even if he’s not playing, say, seven games in seven days because the Yankees aren’t going full-bore yet so early in the season, Volpe will get the vast majority of time at the six.
Players returning from shoulder surgery often need reps for timing, trust, and everyday rhythm to fully return. Entering play yesterday, Volpe had hit .276/.300/.379 in 30 plate appearances while looking steady, but not anything more than that, in the field. That is perfectly fine. The point of rehab is readiness, not domination.
If the shoulder is healthier, the biggest gains may not show up first in the traditional counting stats like batting average and OPS as much as it will in better contact quality, more line drives, and harder hit balls in play. Too much of Volpe’s offensive profile drifted toward weak popups last season as his line-drive percentage fell six percent below his career normal. A compromised shoulder can do that, especially for a hitter whose game depends on quickness through the zone and the ability to drive the gaps.
If the surgery corrected that issue and rehab strengthened it, the expectation should be a healthier version of the player the Yankees already know: not superstardom, but a player entering his prime years who has already shown double-digit power, speed, and quality defense. Thus, fans should expect Volpe to start and have an extended run to fully earn the spot … with the word “earn” meaning he produces slightly better than his career numbers while playing good defense.
What to accept: Caballero has earned a role and is ready
Volpe’s return should not create panic about José Caballero. It should create excitement about roster depth. I am fully on the “start Caballero every day” train, but I also accept that he is a role player with a clearly defined place on this roster. That role is exactly what he has been doing, now with a little whipped cream and a cherry on top at the plate thus far, plus the added value of defensive versatility.
Since Volpe began his rehab assignment, Caballero has been one of the hottest Yankees on the roster. From April 14th onward, he’s hit .347/.396/.510 with two doubles, two homers, six stolen bases, and a .906 OPS, while injecting energy into nearly every game. Aaron Boone acknowledged that reality this week, saying Caballero has “earned a lot of opportunities” and has been “right in the middle of us winning a lot of games.”
That matters. Caballero has provided exactly what winning teams crave from role players: versatility, speed, defensive flexibility, and enough offense to force his way into the lineup.
However, it is worth remembering Caballero got off to a slow start. From opening night against the Giants until April 14th, he was actually hitting a disappointing .179/.220/.286 with a 28.8-percent strikeout rate in 59 at-bats. My colleague Andrés Chávez further broke down Caballero’s contributions in a piece worth reading.
Volpe returning does not mean Caballero disappears. It means Caballero becomes a true utility weapon who can move between shortstop, second base, and third base, even having the ability to man the outfield if a need arises. Amed Rosario should, and will, remain part of that rotation as well.
The Yankees will give Volpe runway to reclaim his everyday role. That is reasonable given what the organization has invested in and communicated about him over the last several years. At the same time, the team now has a much clearer picture of what it has in Caballero and Rosario, and that depth already matters and should continue to matter over the course of the season.
Boone’s comments on Wednesday reinforce that balance. The Yankees still view Volpe as their starting shortstop when healthy, but they have also been clear that Caballero is more than just a placeholder, praising his ability to impact the game in multiple ways and expressing confidence in him holding things down in the meantime.
Fans should resist turning this into a one-week referendum. If Volpe struggles after returning, patience is warranted, even if criticism is fair. If he struggles for a month while Caballero continues producing, then the conversation certainly changes — and that’s to say nothing of top prospect George Lombard Jr., who will likely have his own adjustment period but was just promoted to Triple-A. We have all seen that Caballero can play an effective shortstop and, at least for the half a month of the season, is what we have all hoped Volpe would become at this point of his career offensively.
What to hope for: The Dansby Path
For much of Volpe’s career, he has lived inside comparisons that were never fair to begin with. Because he is a homegrown, righty-hitting shortstop in pinstripes with leadership traits and polished media instincts, the Derek Jeter parallels arrived before his own game ever had a chance to develop.
I am sure that like all of us in a certain generation, Volpe dreamt of being Jeter or as close as possible, and now as fans we would love to see Jeter 2.0. However, the healthier and more realistic hope is not Jeter, a no-doubt Hall of Famer and an outlier. It is Dansby Swanson.
Although a few years older when he was drafted out of Vanderbilt in 2015, Swanson stormed to the majors with star-level pedigree and quickly became a lightning rod for debates about strikeouts, offensive inconsistency, and whether the bat would ever fully match the reputation. His age-24 season with Atlanta in 2018 was affected by injury, and he posted a .238/.304/.395 line.
Then came the rebound. Following offseason surgery and a clean bill of health, Swanson returned in 2019 and slashed .251/.325/.422 while pairing that 91 wRC+ offense with strong defense. He stopped feeling frustrating and started feeling dependable. Over the next four years, Swanson hit a combined .259/.325/.441 with a 108 wRC+ and 16.8 fWAR for the Braves and Cubs, becoming a two-time All-Star and Gold Glove winner.
The similarities between the two are not just narrative, either. Among qualified shortstops in 2024, Volpe ranked 16th in batting average while Swanson ranked 17th. In OBP, they sat 17th and 14th, in slugging 17th and 15th, and in OPS 17th and 15th.
That is not just stylistic similarity. That is the same offensive neighborhood. The same held true again in 2025. Volpe ranked 24th among shortstops in batting average to Swanson’s 20th, 24th in OBP to 21st, 16th in slugging to 14th, and 21st in OPS to 17th.
Even in what felt like a disappointing season, Volpe remained within just a few slots of one of the league’s most accepted veteran shortstop standards, albeit at a dramatically different price point and with Swanson’s bat not quite as electric as his 2020–23 peak. And honestly, that contrast is part of the point. It is easy to live with this profile on a rookie deal if you are the front office. It becomes a much different conversation once a salary climbs north of $20 million annually.
If Volpe lands in the “2018 Swanson” zone over roughly 100 games, something around .238/.304/.395 with mid-teens power and steals, Yankees fans should probably walk away happy. The public projection systems are already pointing almost exactly there. ZiPS projects Volpe for 103 games with a .230/.292/.397/.689 line, 13 home runs, and 16 steals. Steamer is nearly identical at 102 games with a .232/.297/.399/.696 line, 13 home runs, and 16 steals.
Both systems also land on 1.9 WAR, which is exactly the kind of quietly valuable full-season pace contenders take from the bottom of the lineup bats. If the healthy shoulder restores some of the line-drive contact that disappeared last year, there is a realistic path to something even closer to Swanson’s 2019 jump. The realistic hope should be that Volpe lands somewhere above 2018 Swanson, while understanding that the 2019 version likely represents the true ceiling for 2026 at this point.
That is exactly why the Swanson comp works so well as the hopeful path. Swanson has built a long-term career as a 2–4 WAR shortstop, which is exactly the range Volpe is trending toward. That is the hope for Volpe. It’s not that he suddenly becomes an MVP candidate, but that his age-25 season becomes his version of Swanson’s settling point — a player who moves from polarizing to reliable entering their prime seasons. More directly, a shortstop who quietly helps a team win every single day and shows some of the potential that made him an early draft pick has developed into skills and talent.
The bigger picture
Volpe does not need to be Derek Jeter to matter. He does not need to become a superstar to justify patience. He does not need to settle a fan debate the moment he is activated. However, he may need the last bit of grace fans have left for him as he works his way back into the flow of an MLB season. The better question is simple: What does this Yankees team actually need from Volpe?
They need him to be an above-average shortstop whose offense trends upward from last season and his career norms, and whose presence gives the Yankees more ways to win. If he can make a Swanson-like jump while Caballero remains a versatile contributor, the Yankees will have something more valuable than nostalgia or prospect dreams. They will have options, and good teams win with options.
If Volpe struggles, the Yankees appear to have an in-house option ready for the moment. However, there is also a very real possibility that they have two similar and productive players. Neither projects as a star, but both could become valuable contributors for a winning roster this season and beyond. If the Caballero momentum keeps building, Yankees fans will make their voices heard. The front office is already showing they are not wasting time this season after they designated OF Randal Grichuk for assignment after Jasson Domínguez’s hot start in Triple-A, and deciding to call up top prospect Elmer Rodríguez after Luis Gil struggled.
Until then, it is worth hoping for improvement while expecting the numbers to not look great for Volpe right out of the gate. However, he deserves and will receive at least the same runway that was just granted to Caballero to start the season.
