The year is 2021. The confetti from the Braves’ World Series parade has been swept aside and a chill descends upon the baseball world as five cold months stretch between the end of the season and the arrival
of the new campaign. The Yankees have an opportunity to chart their organization on a new course as a once-in-a-generation class of shortstops all hits the market at the same time. Between Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Trevor Story and Javier Báez, the front office has options to pair another offensive superstar in their prime alongside Aaron Judge and hopefully return to true title contenders.
Instead, the Yankees showed not a modicum of interest in any of those difference makers, preferring to employ Mr. Stopgap Isiah Kiner-Falefa while waiting for their golden boy prospect to graduate to the majors. More than a few eyebrows were raised when the Yankees selected Anthony Volpe in the first round of the 2019 MLB, eschewing many higher rated draft prospects as they decided to prioritize Volpe’s “makeup” — a nebulous skill if ever there was one — over any standout tool.
The result has been predictable: three years of looking overmatched by major league pitching, but with a work ethic that improved his defense enough to provide an acceptable floor of value… at least until 2025.
Grade: D-
2025 Statistics: 153 games, 596 PA, .212/.272/.391, 19 HR, 72 RBI, 18 SB, 83 wRC+, -6 OAA, 1.0 fWAR
2026 Contract Status: Projected to earn $3.9 million in first year of arbitration eligibility.
Following his three-and-a-half win 2024 campaign, you could live with Volpe’s low offensive ceiling given the amount of surplus value he was providing with the glove on his league-minimum deal. What you can’t live with if you are a team with the Yankees’ aspirations is a borderline replacement-level player at arguably the most important position on the field.
It’s an open secret at this point that Volpe may have already reached a concerningly low offensive ceiling. Among qualified hitters in 2025, he finished second-worst in average (.212), third-worst in on-base percentage (.272), tied for fifth-worst in wOBA (.286), and tied for seventh-worst in wRC+ (83). Most concerningly, he even looks out of his league against the pitches that any big leaguer should at least hold his own, placing in the bottom-third league-wide against fastballs and pitches over the heart of the plate.
It’s a continuation of a career-long trend for the three-year shortstop. He’s never had a season with an OBP above .300, never exceeded a .400 SLG, never breached the .300 threshold in wOBA and never posted a double-digit walk rate. Since being named the Opening Day shortstop in 2023, Volpe ranks seventh-worst in OBP (.283) among 229 qualified hitters. Over that same span, Volpe is 13th-worst against pitches over the heart of the plate among the 246 hitters who have seen at least 1,000 pitches in that zone — worth a nauseating -44 runs — and in the bottom 20-percent league-wide when it comes to pulling the ball in the air at just 14.3-percent of his batted balls.
The saving grace was that you could at least rely on his defense, Volpe winning a Gold Glove in his rookie season and grading out as the sixth-best defensive shortstop in 2024 with +13 Outs Above Average. That disappeared in a flash in 2025. He tied for the AL lead with 19 errors and finished as the sixth-worst defensive shortstop at -6 OAA. He also became the greatest source of consternation for his manager as the errors racked up, the skipper fielding multiple questions each postgame about his level of trust in his shortstop. It culminated with an outburst from Aaron Boone declaring that Volpe was “f*ing elite” when all publicly available metrics suggested otherwise.
Of course, we learned that Volpe was attempting to play through a partially torn labrum in his throwing shoulder for most of the season, an ailment which required surgical intervention at the conclusion of the season and could delay that start of his 2026 campaign. While obviously unrealistic to expect a major leaguer to voluntarily pull himself out of the lineup due to a nagging but not debilitating injury, surely Volpe had to realize that his consistent presence among the starting nine was hindering the team’s ability to win games. Instead, it became a convenient excuse for Volpe’s continued issues and provided an out for the team to run him out as the starting shortstop next season following a successful repair procedure.
The problem is, several pieces of evidence seem to suggest that the injury was not the source of his struggles. It didn’t appear to affect his swing, Volpe posting career-highs in average bat speed and exit velocity. It also doesn’t explain the pumpkinification of his glove, all of the drop off in production from 2024 to 2025 rooted in a loss of range. We would expect throwing to be the culprit of defensive miscues with an injured shoulder, but in 2025 he set a new career-high in average arm strength (81.9 mph) and posted the exact same arm run value of zero as he did in 2024. The drop-off consisted entirely of a cratering of his range run value from +10 runs in 2024 to -5 runs in 2025.
Unfortunately, this all paints a picture of a hitter who at his best is still 15-percent worse than league average with the bat and has now lost the lone facet of his game that made him a palatable starter. Boone and Brian Cashman nonetheless have restated their faith in Volpe as 2026’s starting shortstop when he returns from injury, and it’s almost certain this is purely down to the team-friendly nature of his salary, Volpe projected to earn $3.9 million in his first season of arbitration eligibility. That’s a cost you can stomach for a one-win player as Volpe was worth in 2025, but as arbitration costs begin to escalate in subsequent seasons, the Yankees may no longer have the option of overlooking the limited value he provides for what he will end up costing them.
The hope is that Volpe can return with a clean bill of health and reclaim at least some of the defensive value of his sophomore campaign, making 2026 something of a Rubicon season for the much-maligned shortstop.
