It's getting very difficult to find observers who don't love Anthony Volpe

TAMPA, Fla. — Anthony Volpe has spent his first spring training in big-league camp with a mile-wide smile that rarely goes away.

He consistently wears it in interactions with teammates and coaches and when he’s making his way to one of the back fields at Steinbrenner Field for infield work.  

It even extends to the moments when he  is approached by members of the media, a far-from-uncommon occurrence when it comes to the Yankees' top prospect, who has a chance to win the open job at shortstop.

In just about every one of those instances — the area in front of his locker in the home clubhouse at times has resembled a wedding receiving line — the 21-year-old Volpe literally has leaped to his feet from the chair he’s sitting in and extended his hand with a smile.

But drawing too many conclusions from the aw-shucks, I’m-just-happy-to-be-here-and-I’ll-help-the-team-any-way-I-can vibe projected by Volpe  would be a mistake.  

“The kid,” one staffer said, “is a cold-blooded killer.”

Volpe — who grew up in Watchung, New Jersey, as a diehard Yankees/Derek Jeter fan — started his professional career at the age of 18 in rookie league ball shortly after the Yankees made him their first-round pick (30th overall) out of Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, in 2019.   At every level of his climb through the Yankees' system, those inside and outside the organization have described an instinctual, fundamentally sound all-around talent but also one with an unrelenting competitiveness and burning intensity to win.

One such flash came Sept. 7, 2021, when Volpe, then 20, was playing with High-A Hudson Valley at Greensboro.

He cracked an opposite-field homer to right-center and  promptly was ejected by plate umpire Tyler Witte shortly after crossing the plate.

Volpe politely declined to specify exactly what he said as he touched home, but one rival scout said it sounded like an objection to a pitch he felt should have been called ball four earlier in the at-bat.  

“I wouldn’t really want it to be an example [of that intensity],” the 5-11, 180-pound Volpe said almost sheepishly when asked about it recently. “I definitely regret that it happened.”

Is he embarrassed by it?

“Oh, definitely,” said Volpe, who went 1-for-4 with a double Saturday against the Rays and is hitting .333 with a 1.042 OPS in five Grapefruit League games. “As soon as it happened.”

And yes, Volpe is very much aware that Jeter, in the minors and throughout his 20-year Hall of Fame career, was never thrown out of a game.

“Emotions got the best of me,” he said. “Another part of the game I’m working on.”

No one around the Yankees believes that element of the game will be an issue. Nor does anyone else.

Rival talent evaluators — some of whom rarely dodge a chance to take a shot at the Yankees for overhyping their prospects (which just about every team does, though the Yankees frequently take it to the next level) — are as unanimous in their praise of Volpe’s skill set as his organization is.   

In conversations with a large cross-section of opposing team evaluators assigned to the Yankees’ system over the last three years —  scouts who would proudly describe themselves as having an “old-school” bent and others who come more from the analytics side — finding one who didn’t project Volpe as an eventual big-leaguer, and a good one, has proved difficult, if not impossible.  

(To a degree, the same can be said of one of Volpe's competitors  for the shortstop job, Oswald Peraza.)

“Love him. Love everything about him,” one American League scout —  whose background is more analytically inclined and who would very much fit into the category of not often being generous in his praise of the Yankees and their player development — said of Volpe during spring training. “The makeup seems off the charts, the skill set is real. Not sure he’s a shortstop long-term and that he won’t end up at second, but I’d happily take him [for us] at short. I generally stay away from this [cliché] . . . but he’s just a winning player.”

Yankees scouts and opposing scouts alike have consistently referenced Volpe’s instincts in the field as well as his fearlessness, aspects of his game that have made an impression in the clubhouse.  Aaron Judge,  himself a highly touted prospect when he arrived in spring training in 2015 for his first big-league camp, noted a play Volpe made Wednesday against the Nationals.

With runners at second and third and one out, Joey Meneses sent a sharp grounder in the hole at short. Without hesitation, Volpe threw to third, and after the Yankees recorded the first out in a rundown, the sequence became an inning-ending double play when Meneses was caught at second trying to advance.

“Usually, you see a guy at that age is afraid to make the mistake, so they’d be afraid to maybe risk going to third on that play,” Judge said. “Usually it’s ‘let me get the easy out and get the ball out of my hands, I don’t want it.’ [Volpe] seems like a guy saying ‘hit it to me. I’ll make the right play.’ Just the heads-up plays and not being afraid to make a mistake. And you need that, especially at this level. You have to be able to have the confidence to go out there and showcase what you’ve got, whether you’re 40 years old or 20 years old.”

Volpe, who will turn 22 on April 28, has been characterized as a bit of an “old soul” when it comes to the game. For instance, early in camp, when asked whom he was most looking forward to meeting and/or speaking with about baseball, Volpe said Willie Randolph.

“I’m just excited to sit on the bench and talk to him,” Volpe said.

The response reaffirmed what many in the organization already thought about Volpe and touched Randolph, 68, a six-time All-Star and World Series champion with the Yankees in 1977-78 who has spent spring training mentoring many of the young infielders in camp.

Randolph multiple times has described Volpe as having the “it” factor, that undefined quality some players just seem to possess, something that is either there or it isn’t. Jeter was spoken of in the same vein from an early age as someone who had intangible traits that can’t necessarily be measured to go along with the undeniable on-field skills.    

Volpe  has done a good job of balancing the not-always-easy task of navigating his first major league clubhouse, of displaying a confidence that he belongs but not displaying it too much. While the sport has for the most part put behind it the days of expecting rookies to be seen and not heard — the Yankees' clubhouse in recent years has been especially welcoming to first-timers — hyped young players still are more than capable of rubbing veterans the wrong way (Clint Frazier and Rob Refsnyder would be two recent Yankee examples of not walking that line so well).

That has not been a problem for Volpe, who — like Jeter, the player he grew up “idolizing” — comes off as if he’s not sure what all the fuss is about. He said “sometimes” the attention he’s received can be uncomfortable.

“I feel like there’s a lot of incredible big-leaguers in here with amazing careers and it feels weird when I’m the one being asked the questions,” Volpe said. “It’s something new. I’m learning to be more comfortable with it. But it’s a learning experience. I’m learning on the fly.”