Is this finally the year we've been waiting for? Or...
There’s something about Anthony Volpe that makes you want to believe. Maybe it’s the Manhattan roots. Maybe it’s the way he plays – head down, runs hard, says the right things. Maybe it’s just the idea of it: the local kid who grew up a Yankees fan, met Derek Jeter, called the next Derek Jeter, becomes their starting shortstop, and leads them back to the promised land.
But then a moment comes, like Sunday night. Tie game, bottom of the seventh, bases loaded. And Anthony Volpe… strikes out. Another rally fizzles. Another chance slips through. And just like that, you’re back to wondering: is this actually the year he puts it all together? Or is this just the same conversation we’ve been having for three seasons? Volpe had a 3-0 count with the bases loaded. He took a strike. Then he chased ball four, then ball five, and ball six. The at-bat unraveled, and so did the inning.
An inning earlier, same situation. Bases loaded, and Anthony Volpe hits a soft grounder to miss another opportunity in what could’ve potentially costed the Subway Series.
The Yankees have been all in on Volpe from the start. They gave him the shortstop job straight out of spring training in 2023, nudged Oswald Peraza out of the picture, and made it clear: this was their guy. And in fairness, he gave them enough to justify the faith. A Gold Glove his rookie year. Glimpses of pop. The kind of attitude you want in the clubhouse.
But it’s 2025 now. We’re almsot 1,500 plate appearances deep. At some point, the question stops being “when will he break out?” and becomes “is this just who he is?”
And to be clear: that’s not a knock. Volpe’s not a bust. He’s not even bad. He’s just… not quite what he was supposed to be. At least not yet.
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And yet, because of how hard the Yankees leaned into the Volpe bet, they’re in a weird spot. If he was drafted by any other team, we’d be praising his glove and watching his bat develop without panic. But he’s the face of this generation of Yankees prospects. He’s been treated like a cornerstone since he was a teenager. That kind of branding makes it really hard to have honest conversations when things don’t come easy.
To his credit, this has been Volpe’s best offensive season so far. He’s slashing .235/.323/.422 with a .745 OPS. He’s on pace to match his rookie home run total (21), and the underlying numbers suggest real improvement.
He’s walking more – his 11.5% walk rate is nearly double what it was last year. His chase rate is among the best in the league (93rd percentile), which means he’s laying off pitches he used to flail at (seemingly not enough though). That shows up in the barrel rate too, now at 10.6%, up from just 3.3% in 2024. He’s squaring balls up more often, hitting them harder, and generally looking more in control at the plate.
Even when the bat hasn’t been there, the glove has. Volpe’s already saved four defensive runs this season. The metrics aren’t perfect, his outs above average sits at -1, but the instincts, the range, the smoothness is still there. Still one of the better shortstops in baseball.
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If this is the floor, it’s a respectable one. It’s just… not the ceiling we were promised.
Volpe’s only 24. In a vacuum, Anthony Volpe is a young, improving shortstop with solid tools and room to grow. But this has never been a vacuum. The Yankees framed him as the next franchise player before he took a single big league swing.
And now? Well, fans are still waiting for that moment. But nights like Sunday make it harder to keep the faith. Because while the numbers are better, the issues haven’t disappeared. You can still get him to chase when the lights are brightest. You can still beat him with sequencing. And you can still see that he’s not quite comfortable being the guy in the big moments.
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it really does take time. Maybe he’ll be a late-bloomer who eventually figures it out. Baseball development isn’t linear, we know that. We’ve seen it. But what happens when the timeline runs up against reality? What happens when “give him time” turns into “how much time?” And what happens if this is just… who he is? A good shortstop, sure. But not that shortstop.
No one wants Anthony Volpe to succeed more than Yankees fans. Everyone wants the kid to win. But he’s not making it easy, not on the fans, not on the front office, and not on himself. There’s real improvement happening, but the key moments keep slipping past.
So we’re back here again, trying to figure out what to make of him. The numbers are trending in the right direction. Maybe this still becomes the year. Maybe this is just the slow climb to something bigger. Or maybe this is what happens when a franchise falls in love with an idea before the player’s fully ready to live up to it.
Time will tell. But for now, we’re still waiting. Will this finally be his breakout year, or just another chapter in a story built more on hope than results?
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