Just like almost everyone who has watched Anthony Volpe defend this year, I can confidently say that throughout the season, he doesn’t seem willing to attack the ball. I mean: He didn’t look like he was moving at a rhythm before playing football. He led the AL with 19 mistakes, 13 of which appeared.
Last season, he was one of the best defenders in the sport. He lacks high-end athletic ability and arm strength, and he makes up for the contribution he makes with the highest footwork, intuition and pace. He doesn’t have the luxury of a rocket arm, making all these features even more important. This season, his footwork quality around the ball was inconsistent and led to mistakes in games he had made throughout the first two seasons of his career, whether it was his gloves or the accuracy of his arms.
Some of Volpe’s defensive disasters may have something to do with his health. He exposed a partially torn lip through his left shoulder that he later discovered, which was the injury that occurred on May 3, when he felt a sound of popping up in the joint, while the rays were against the rays. After more than four months, he finally received a September 10 cocoa pole to resolve the September 10 damage. Only 3 of his 19 turnovers appeared before he hurt his shoulders, and he made no mistakes in 12 games after his shot returned to the field. Although the injury was not his throwing arm, it could still affect his throwing. Shortstop uses his left arm as a stabilizer to take them in the right direction when throwing. Think about the basic mechanism you taught as a kid: point the glove at the target, step on the target, and throw the ball. If you have an unapplication shoulder injury, you may not be able to use it to start the mechanic with the exact throw correctly. Many times, shortstops stretches out the ball while moving, and there is no time to put their feet straight toward the first base before releasing the ball. In these cases, it is more important to have healthy, non-direct arms to guide the ball when the lower half of the body is neutralized by some people. This is especially true for shortstops like Volpe, who do not have powerful weapons and rely on quick releases to compensate. There is no way to know how much the shoulder bothers him, but it could hinder his game.
If the shot is solved, if the shoulders are indeed the main reason for Volpe’s poor appearance, the Yankees should be in a better position when they enter the playoffs, and a game could mean the difference between moving forward and being eliminated. He will be shortstop at 6:08 PM ET tonight, when the Yankees hosted the Red Sox in the three best AL Wild Card series at Yankee Stadium.
With all this in mind, let’s break Volpe’s defensive season to see what went wrong and how to do it again during the most important period of the year.
At this point, we should all know that defensive metrics may be fluctuating, but data fluctuations alone do not always explain the shift in defensive performance. Instead, metrics can tell us a lot about why performance is changing, especially when they are consistent with what our eyes tell us. So let’s start with Volpe’s metrics.
Volpe Defense Metrics
| season | Sprint speed percentile | Arm strength percentile | OAA | frv | PhD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Chapter 78 | 28th | 1 | 1 | 15 |
| 2024 | Chapter 83 | Chapter 29 | 13 | 8 | 6 |
| 2025 | Chapter 76 | Chapter 33 | -6 | -5 | 1 |
Source: Baseball Savant and Baseball Reference
There are some differences between the OAA and DRS, but the general consensus is that Volpe has either been above average or has a very good defense in his first two seasons. Interestingly, I fully understand how the metrics are falling. He wasn’t the talent of Bobby Witt Jr., who had a much higher primitive physical ability than Volpe, but despite some weaker tools, Yankees’ shortstops played a role in every direction. However, this season, he no longer took out the ball in the first two seasons:
Volpe Directed OAA
| season | exist | Back | Going to 3B | Going to 1B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| 2025 | -1 | -1 | -3 | -1 |
Source: Baseball Savant
Given his below-average arm strength, Volpe wasn’t that good before when he was back on the ball or moving towards third base – even though he was usually still playing – because these require shortstops to get their throws more. So, I think these dramas will be the source of his 2025 field battle. Yes, he was at the worst when he was away from first base this season, but he has only had a slight decline in these games compared to previous years. Instead, his defense fell significantly in two areas that once were his biggest advantage: entering the ball and moving to the glove side.
Above, I mentioned Volpe’s lack of aggressiveness when entering the ball. This plays a direct role here. To make these dramas in front of you or towards first base, you must attack the ball with speed and direction efficiency. Your footwork must be fast and decisive when flowing into the throw. This year’s Volpe is not the case:
The first two low balls above aren’t bad, and in a sense, the first baseman screeches while being better than Ben Rice, but it’s not easy to deal with them, especially when you think rice is a conversion catcher, it’s still learning the rope first. Anyway, these are relatively regular volt balls, and he should have enough time to make accurate throws – they should be on the chest of rice. In the first game, Volpe moved clearly on the ball until he finally scored, when he temporarily stopped the ball and stopped his feet. The pause directly affects the direction he generates by rounding the ball. He then opened his hips too early and lost all the real spins when throwing. The stagnation of the last two steps is a common trend this year.
In the second clip, Volpe stopped in Edgar Quero’s sliding floor before reaching out the ball and unable to pass through it smoothly, which stiffened his gloves. In the third video above, Yandy Díaz’s bat is also strange. Volpe has more time to play on the ball, as Díaz is not a fast runner. However, as Volpe slowed down, he changed his posture several times and lost control of his body. He rose too high before he released the ball, causing him to spend some juice on the throw and provided a huge short jump for Mimon’s huge jump.
Then, in the last two videos above, Volpe is largely lacking the pace we are used to seeing from him. Myles Straw Bats skimmers are the exact type of shortstops that can show off how smooth they are. As the grounders approach, they maneuver their bodies towards the first base so they can release the ball faster. Instead, Volpe used his body to tilt the ball towards the plate. When he came out, through the movement and threw the ball, it was too late to get the quick straw. You can also see Volpe’s hesitation on large choppers. He waited until the high beer came to him and missed the precious time to throw away the runners again. Rocket shortstops like Elly de La Cruz and Masyn Winn can sit on these balls, but Volpe doesn’t have the strength of his arms to get rid of it.
Now, let’s focus on the drama Volpe turns first:
See how he takes very, very big steps when he reorganized? These huge moves left him unbalanced and fell. When moving sideways or entering the ball, he should break up as he approaches the ball. Doing so can make infielders more dynamic and control movements, helping them adapt to sudden hops or changes in directions in the ground. Longer steps and larger changes make changing directions more difficult because each movement has more motivation.
A good example of a mistake first throwing on the Leo ground is. In this regard, and all the throws we’ve seen so far, Walp needs to re-eliminate himself after getting the ball out because he doesn’t have a good position to pass the ball. The only way he can get rid of these positions and throw is to add more mixes, which is not ideal, either, as it adds more time to finish the game. Knowing that he didn’t want to take too long, he ended up throwing violently from the suboptimal position, causing his hips to open prematurely, his arm slots to fall, and his fall sinks and bites the angle, which made the first baseman tricky. An injured non-shot shoulder may make the situation worse because he cannot stabilize his body and will use a lead arm to throw the throw guide.
Initially, I did a lot of research on the piece, and then he received a cocoa protease shot and sat for five days. At the time, he was in -8 OAA. He ended the season with -6. Yes, that’s a small portion of the game and the wild chance, but hopefully he gets 2 OAAs after he gets the injury. Here is what Volpe looks like in the past two weeks:
The pace, pace and throwing accuracy are there. Fielding was his carry tool for his first two seasons and it was normal to see him do this in every direction. This makes him a regular player, and he is a solid player even if his bats are slower. Without it, he looked more like an alternative player. If there are any signs in the past two weeks, he is in a better position on defense, which is very important for the Yankees’ efforts to return to the World Series for the second straight season.
Esteban is a contributor to Fangraphs. One of his main hobbies is taking dry hacks every time he sees a bat.
