The Anthony Volpe Question

He's doing it again...

True consistency in baseball doesn’t actually exist. A .300 hitter doesn’t get exactly 3 hits in exactly 10 exact at bats over the course of the year. A 3.00 ERA pitcher doesn’t allow exactly 3 runs every 9 exact innings. Hence the term batting and earned run average. It’s a sport of streaks, both hot and cold, with the results usually falling somewhere in the middle. Anthony Volpe is an extreme example of this particular embodiment of the game.

For the Yankees’ third year shortstop, it’s not uncommon to have a few scorching weeks followed by many more that would make even the Arctic Circle blush. That happened in 2023 and it happened again in 2024, despite different approaches. 2025 has seen more of the same, albeit with a slightly different flavor.

Overall, this has been Volpe’s most successful year at the plate. With a 9.1% BB rate and a .180 ISO–both career highs in their own right–he came into Monday’s action against the Reds with career highs with a .320 wOBA and a 105 wRC+. For years, I’ve said that all Volpe needs to do to be a very valuable player is to be a league average hitter. Pair that with his defense at short and his base running, and that’s a borderline all-star level player.

There are also some under the hood numbers that point the right way, too. For example, Volpe is crushing four seamers this year, +10 runs. His hard hit percentage is up 8 points from where it was last year. His barrel percentage is up to where it was in 2023 as well, a year in which he was trying to hit the ball with more authority. Additionally, his chase rate is in the 80th percentile. So, are we done with the inconsistency? No. No we’re not.

For all those positives, there are some red-ish flags that could be cause for concern. One such example is that per Statcast, Volpe’s 5.5% weak contact rate is the worst of his career. Despite doing so much damage against fastballs, he’s also whiffing at around 30% on them. His rate of pulling balls in the air–just about the best thing a hitter can do, process-wise–is in the blue on Statcast. Then, there’s the hot and cold thing.

The numbers going into Monday’s game were, as previously stated, good. But there’s a problem. The same problem we started off with. They are buoyed by a hot first month that Volpe hasn’t been able to keep up or repeat since.

In March and April, Volpe hit .237/.328/.486 with a .342 wOBA and 120 wRC+. That may have even undersold how he was doing, given his xwOBA was a bit higher at .352. He was barreling up the ball pretty well: 11/3 Barrels/batted ball event and 6.9 Barrels/PA. His hard hit rate was 47.5% and he had an average exit velo of 91.8 MPH. Since the calendar turned to May, though, things haven’t gone as well.

Since May 1, he’s hitting .236/297/.401 with a .304 wOBA and 94 wRC+. His xwOBA has been .288 in that time and he’s shed some hard contact, down to 39.5% with his exit velocity dropping to 87.5. He’s barreling the ball less on a batted ball event basis–7.6–and a per PA basis–5.1. Now, to be fair to Volpe here, a 94 wRC+ is fine for a shortstop. And considering the cold streaks he had at times in 2023 and 2024, this is actually pretty good as far as cold streaks go. If he were to hit like this over the course of a full season with his typical defense (94th percentile for OAA in 2024, 78th in 2023), that would, again, be a very valuable player. But something funny happened on the way to the forum.

Volpe hasn’t been successful stealing bases this year. He has 8 total, but he’s been caught 7 times, which matches his total from 2024, when he stole 28 bases. An 8/15 SB rate in 2025, with bigger bases and limited pickoff attempts, is pitiful, especially for someone as fast as Volpe who’s been a good base stealer in the past. More concerning, though, is that his range is down to the 46th percentile, below average. If Volpe is going to put up below average offensive numbers and not back it up with good base running and defense, what are the Yankees to do?

Well, I think it's easy to know what they’re going to do. Even with Volpe going into arbitration for 2026, he’s still going to be relatively cheap. But is this enough? Is this really what the Yankees wanted out of Volpe? I think it’s safe to say they had bigger expectations for him than what he’s been so far. Almost three years in now, Volpe is running out of time to turn a corner and be something else. The Yankees have, more or less, painted themselves into a corner with Volpe, having passed on multiple free agent shortstops in his favor and not really having anyone backing him up who could give him a run for his money. Volpe’s story is far from fully written, but the ink is starting to dry up.