It was just four seasons ago that Anthony Volpe won the battle to be the next shortstop for the New York Yankees.
He had the perfect story to be Derek Jeter’s long-time successor. A New York native playing shortstop for his favorite team, the Yankees. It’s a plot right out of a movie. As it turns out, this Bronx tale may have a sad ending in sight.
Instead of being a cornerstone in the Yankee lineup for years to come, Volpe has found himself fighting to keep the job as new talent emerges. His recent struggles have shown the Yankees that they may have overestimated his projections.
Another Year of Struggle
Volpe started the season on the IL recovering from shoulder surgery. After nine games down in the minors, he was called up to the Bronx after Jose Caballero went down with a fractured finger. This was Volpe’s time to make a point to the organization that he is still their long-term shortstop.
Volpe took this opportunity and got off to a solid start, hitting .281 with a 156 wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created Plus) in his first 10 games back. Optimism settled in, and fans thought the 25-year-old was getting back on track after his putrid 2025 campaign. But as each game passed, the early positives quickly became negatives as reality crept in.
Since May 27, Volpe has been in a rut. In those 12 games, he is hitting .154, with one extra-base hit, and a wRC+ of 12. This slumping stretch has exposed to fans that Volpe isn’t the answer he was in 2023. Through his small sample size this season, the struggling shortstop’s metrics are down compared to his career averages.
He has only a 30 percent hard-hit rate, down from his almost 40 percent average, along with an average exit velocity of 85.1 mph per Baseball Savant. Not to mention other metrics like barrel percentage and expected slugging have tanked. Manager Aaron Boone told Talkin’ Yanks that Volpe’s been unlucky offensively, but the fact of the matter is that he has just been flat-out bad so far.
The battle of who should play shortstop is over for Volpe. Caballero has won the job, but with the surplus of injuries the Yankees have faced, Volpe will still see the field. As the Yankees are in year four of the Volpe experiment, it’s hard to justify how much longer this experiment can last.
Not the Player the Yankees Hoped For
Volpe’s recent struggles shouldn’t be a surprise. Through all four of his seasons, he’s been a below-average hitter. He has a career OPS+ of 83, where the MLB average is 100. He doesn’t hit for average, has no elite contact skills nor a solid on-base percentage. Volpe’s once potential to be a star has faded to a below-average player.
From his debut in 2023 till now, Volpe is among 37 qualified shortstops in the majors. In that pool of 37 players, Volpe ranks 34th in average, 34th in on-base percentage and 25th in slugging. It just gets worse from there as he has the sixth most strikeouts with 491 in that span, plus the fourth worst BABIP. If you just look at all his stats, he ranks in the lower quartile for almost everything. Championship-contending teams can’t have that kind of performance holding them back.
His offensive production has been lackluster, and the defensive side hasn’t gotten any better either. Volpe won the Gold Glove in his rookie season but has yet to follow up with a remarkable defensive campaign. In 2025, for instance, he led the American League with 18 errors.
With neither of his offensive and defensive abilities developing fully, this creates the debate of whether he is even a serviceable starter at the major league level.
What’s Next for Volpe
His unreliability on both sides of the field fuels the notion that his days as a Yankee are numbered. It’s clear to everyone who he is. In fact, Volpe has never had an average over .245 or an OPS above .670 in his career. He isn’t their long-term shortstop solution.
His replacement in Caballero probably isn’t the solution either, but he has been reliable. Caballero is a spark plug for the bottom of the order that the Yankees need. So far this year, he’s posted a .715 OPS with 15 stolen bases. He’s not all-star caliber, but his production has trumped Volpe’s in comparison.
Unless Volpe can explode offensively with the time he has until injured players return, the Yankees may trade or send him down. The Yankees need a catcher and a reliever, so shopping Volpe during the trade deadline isn’t out of the question. He is only 25 and isn’t a free agent till 2029. With plenty of control left, a team could gamble on him to find any potential left.
A change of scenery might be what Volpe needs. Not everyone succeeds in the Bronx; look at Sonny Gray or Joey Gallo, for example. If the Yankees can get any return for him in a package to make their current roster better, then they should pull the trigger.
A fresh start for Volpe is a very real outcome, as the Yankees have all their chips on top prospect George Lombard Jr. He has looked like the real deal down in the minor leagues as he waits to burst onto the scene. Joel Sherman of the New York Post even said, “It’s not out of the question that George Lombard is the shortstop on August 1.”
Lombard probably needs to finish the season in Triple-A, but by 2027, he will most likely be the starting shortstop. Volpe’s downward spiral has made it easy for the Yankees to choose who they should believe is the future and who is not.
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