Yankees' Anthony Volpe encouraged by recent hot stretch

OAKLAND, Calif. – Anthony Volpe looked at Tuesday night’s game, one where he had three hits for the first time in his young career, as a net positive.

“I guess for me personally,” Volpe said.  

Then the Yankees rookie gave an addendum to the answer, a caveat that provided insight into some of the reason the 22-year-old won over his veteran teammates from the first day of spring training.

“At the end of the day, it didn’t feel like it was enough because we lost,” Volpe said of the ugly 2-1 setback to the A’s, who pushed their MLB-worst record to 21-60 with the victory. “Definitely a building block for me, but I just have to be better for the team.”

Volpe, who won the high-profile spring training battle for the starting shortstop job, hasn’t come close in the regular season to duplicating the performance that earned him the job in a runaway.

But the last couple of weeks have been far better for Volpe who, after Tuesday’s effort, is 11-for-35 (.314) with a home run and a .929 OPS in his last 12 games.

“The at-bats have felt way better,” Volpe said. “My takes, what pitch I’m swinging at, what pitch I’m taking, I just feel a lot more comfortable. Feels pretty much back to normal.”

Normal for Volpe, the Yankees’ first-round pick [30th overall] in the 2019 draft, has been a much higher level of production at the plate than he’s shown nearly three months into the season. Throughout his quick rise in the Yankees’ system, offense was rarely a question for Volpe, whose season batting average and OPS dipped to .186 and .605, respectively, before this recent hot stretch raised those numbers to .203 and .650, going into Wednesday night.

Much has been made – and still is – of Volpe watching some old video on an off day before this stretch with Austin Wells, another top organizational prospect who was a teammate of his last year with Double-A Somerset, and the tweak Volpe made to his stance as a result. The pair noticed the shortstop’s stance in some of those at-bats from 2022, a season in which Volpe hit 18 homers and compiled an .820 OPS in 110 games with Somerset, was more closed that the more open stance he’d been using this year.

“They’ve helped him not fly open quite so often,” one rival AL scout said of the tweaks. “[A] closed off stance is allowing him to open up into a more neutral position, but his hips are still gone very early and the (swing) path is still really uphill…swing decisions have improved slightly, likely a result of stride direction keeping his head in the game longer. [It’s] really nothing drastic.”

The scout mentioned Volpe’s “uphill” swing, a common critique from scouts and talent evaluators assigned to the Yankees. It’s far from an industry secret Volpe has struggled hitting high velocity fastballs up in the zone – one of the biggest reasons he had 89 strikeouts in 261 at-bats entering Wednesday – and the rookie will continue to see those pitches until he proves he can hit them consistently.

“Looking through the hits he’s had [in this stretch], there’s been some soft contact and the big damage has been done on some [non-competitive] pitches, all except one against subpar velo,” an NL scout said. “[It's] not like he’s started catching up to plus velo or showing the ability to handle plus spin either. But I would certainly be encouraged…and taking advantage of (bad) pitching is part of being successful (in the Majors), too.”                     

Count Aaron Boone among those encouraged.

“He’s been getting more hits, hitting the ball on the nose,” Boone said. “Even the first AB (Tuesday), [he] lines out to the second baseman. So I feel like he’s making some good, solid adjustments. It’s good to see him trending, I feel like, in a good way right now.”