Yankees prospect Anthony Volpe has been as good as advertised 

TAMPA, Fla. — Anthony Volpe entered spring training with a chance to win the competition and become the Yankees’ starting shortstop, and he is off to about as good a start as he could have hoped for.

Volpe, 21, homered to left-center to lead off Thursday’s 9-1 victory over the Pirates in Bradenton and went 2-for-3 with a walk. He began the game by crushing a 2-and-2 slider from righthander Mitch Keller that didn’t break and came in high and slightly outside.

Volpe is 4-for-11 (.364) with a 1.144 OPS in four Grapefruit League games.

“It’s been good. It’s just been great to play again with a bunch of great teammates and great guys that have been down here for a while,” said Volpe, who was among the large group of Yankees who started arriving at the team’s minor-league complex in January for workouts.

“We’ve been training really hard and everyone’s kind of had these days circled on the calendar to get back on the field and get back against other guys and not just each other.”

Volpe, a fundamentally sound fielder, started Thursday at second base for the second time in spring training, and more than a few scouts believe he will be a second baseman in the majors.

Volpe, much like Derek Jeter — the player he grew up idolizing as a diehard Yankees fan in New Jersey — doesn’t do much in the way of taking bows for himself. But the first-round pick in the 2019 draft has been hyped every step of his climb through the minors by talent evaluators both inside and outside the organization, and an endless supply of superlatives has been thrown his way by his teammates and manager in spring training.

“He’s come in and gotten after it,” Aaron Boone said after the game. “I think in line with the reputation he’s earned within our organization.”

With David Lennon in Bradenton