Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
BetweenThePinstripes asks: Will Volpe be the Yankees’ starting shortstop in 2026?
Unless something dramatically changes in the final month-plus of this season, I have to assume that’s the plam going into the year. After passing on several classes of elite shortstops, the Yankees don’t have many
options for free agent additions in the offseason: perhaps Bo Bichette tickles their fancy, but its unlikely that they pry him away from their divisional rivals, or even have the interest in attempting to do so.
That is the main point of intrigue with Volpe’s situation – the team wholeheartedly has his back, despite not having showcased anywhere near enough results to warrant this level of public backing. Sure, the team’s options behind him aren’t exactly ideal, but they weren’t when Gleyber Torres was struggling mightily last year and he got an infamous benching that went against the previous style of Aaron Boone’s managerial decisions. It worked for Torres, who turned it on in the second half, but Volpe enjoys all the benefits of Boone’s typical player-defensive style despite arguably performing worse. It’s not that it’s out of the ordinary, but that their attempt to go against the wave worked out and seemingly made no countercurrent leading into this year.
I expect Volpe to have the starting nod for Opening Day, but even if things don’t continue to worsen this season I’d have to imagine that there’s some sort of leash being established the next time around. They simply can’t watch their offense-first prospect with questionable defensive metrics hit the majors and become a defense-first glove with streaky offense, and then suddenly lose the defensive value without any tradeoff and feel no concern whatsoever. The challenge to Volpe’s hold on shortstop may not be imminent, but it’s not impossible to find.
The idiot that said, “Harper is coming” asks: Have you looked towards next season and imagined how bad this offense, especially in the infield, could look? McMahon, Volpe, Cabrera, and Caballero will all spend some time on the left side of the infield. They all have career wRC+ between 81-89. That sucks.
At the very least, Jose Caballero has no fear about taking a base and often succeeds, giving tbe Yankee offense an additional dimension that it bas lacked for quite some time. Of course, it would be more valuable if be was on base more to utilize it, and that brings us to the overall problem of this infield core for next season – they just don’t succeed at the plate very often.
The main engine of the offense will still hum so long as Aaron Judge is around, and having Jazz Cbisholm Jr., Ben Rice, and hopefully more of Giancarlo Stanton around him will keep it a threatening lineup. If Cody Bellinger isn’t back for next season that’ll be a blow, but they already hitched themselves to an offensive handicap when they traded for McMahon, who has managed to underperform at the plate outside of Coors Field even compared to the pedestrian numbers he had previously. Volpe as we discussed already has his limitations at the dish, and though I give Cabrera a bit of a break compared to the others since he will purely be a backup player, he isn’t going to be part of the solution here.
A top-heavy offense isn’t impossible to work with, but committing to an entire innings’ worth of your lineup being a pleasant surprise if they come up with hits isn’t ideal roster construction. That being said, they were already in a predicament with their roster management before the deadline, so they’ve traded one larger issue (having a black hole at third) for several smaller headaches. Not ideal, but they made due with what they could. If they were going to settle in this way though, perhaps they should’ve avoided going for a multi-year commitment to a bandage solution.
