When Anthony Volpe fails, there is a wave of commentary about whether the Yankees‘ first-round pick should be sent off and replaced with unknown internal options.
Send him down to Triple-A, hit him ninth, call up George Lombard Jr. from Double-A after just a couple of weeks there, the fanbase has come up with every possible way to displace Volpe from the position.
He’s currently 10th in fWAR among shortstops and is on pace to hit over 40 doubles this season, and yet the average fan views him as one of the biggest problems on the Yankees.
Narratives around Anthony Volpe have been forged out of misinformation despite objective data indicating he’s a productive player, and for a first-place team with a huge AL East lead, he has become an unfair point of criticism.
Claim #1: Anthony Volpe Has Been a Bad Hitter; His Numbers Are Inflated By Opening Week
Let’s take the easiest claim to disprove: Anthony Volpe has a 115 wRC+ and .332 xwOBA on the season, which are firmly positive numbers.
It is true that the majority of his home run production came during that stretch of the season, where he was a home run machine versus the Brewers and Diamondbacks.
What is not true is this idea that his offensive production hinges on that Opening Week; you can remove the stretch where he hit four home runs he still has a 107 wRC+ on the season.
Looking at the last month, Anthony Volpe has a 131 wRC+ with really good underlying data, and right now he’s on pace for 46 doubles if he can play 150 games.
If you were told that the Yankees would get double-digit home runs and nearly 50 doubles from Anthony Volpe at the start of the season while having a 115 wRC+, would anyone realistically complain?
Claim #2: The Yankees Do Not Win Games Because of Anthony Volpe’s Bat
This is another easy claim to refute; while Baseball Reference and FanGraphs measure what’s considered a high leverage situation differently, they both agree he’s performed well in these situations.
In 43 plate appearances in high leverage, according to Baseball Reference, he’s hitting .278 with a .900 OPS, while FanGraphs grades him out as a .227 hitter with an .802 OPS in 28 Plate Appearances.
The point is, when the games are close and Anthony Volpe has a chance to make an impact, the numbers suggest that he has been capable of it.
He has a 114 wRC+ with no one on, a 116 wRC+ when runners are on, and while the numbers when the game is out of hand are insane, that has been the case for most hitters on the Yankees.
Would Anthony Volpe win Clutch Player of the Year if MLB copied the NBA’s newest regular-season award? No, but he is coming through with some big hits, despite how bad some of the strikeouts can look in big spots.
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Claim #3: Anthony Volpe Has Not Lived Up to Being a Top 15-20 Prospect
MLB Pipeline is a free and easy-to-access prospect site that is officially partnered with Major League Baseball, so we’ll use their ranking to reflect public perception.
It’s not a perfect science, and I prefer Baseball America, but understanding that the casual fan is likely going to fall more in line with Pipeline is an important part of this thought experiment.
Anthony Volpe was ranked as the fifth-best prospect on that top 100 list, trailing Gunnar Henderson, Corbin Carroll, Francisco Alvarez, and Jordan Walker.
The best players in that top five are the two top-ranked prospects with Henderson and Carroll, but Volpe has cemented himself as better than Walker and Alvarez through this point in their careers.
The next five prospects are Andrew Painter, Grayson Rodriguez, Jackson Chourio, Marcelo Mayer, and Elly De La Cruz.
Of those five, the two players whom I would take over Volpe without second thought are Chourio and De La Cruz, with Rodriguez undergoing inconsistency and injury, while Painter and Mayer have yet to get their feet wet in the big leagues.
As you continue to scroll through the top 50, the vast majority of players on this list are either clearly on a worse trajectory than Anthony Volpe or haven’t gotten much big-league experience under them.
If you look at players age-24 or younger since 2023, Anthony Volpe is seventh in fWAR (6.7), so why is he considered this massive bust of a prospect?
MLB Pipeline graded him as a 60 FV prospect; that’s an above-average everyday regular, someone who accumulates around 3-4 WAR a season and hopefully makes an All-Star team.
That is exactly what Anthony Volpe has been through this point of his career, and he’s in the midst of his most encouraging season offensively we have seen in the big leagues.
He has a .332 xwOBA entering play today compared to a .305 xwOBA last season, and if Anthony Volpe maintains this offensive profile and continues to play excellent defense he could end up with a strong season.
Steamer projects the offense to slow down with a 102 wRC+ and 2.4 fWAR the rest of the way, which would give him 154 games with a 3.9 fWAR.
Is that a bust? Is that a player who should draw the ire of fans whenever he strikes out in a big spot? Should we maybe take the target off of Anthony Volpe’s back?
You don’t need a player to take out frustration on when things aren’t going right. Maybe he hits the skids and we do have to talk about his long-term future as the Yankees’ shortstop.
All I know is that he’s top three in DRS and top six in OAA since his debut, making him a top five defensive player at a premium position who is flashing an above-average bat.
In a sport where highly touted prospects become duds, the Yankees shouldn’t be criticized for their 30th overall pick being a good player who isn’t a star.