As a person who watched almost all of Anthony Volpe’s defensive games this year, I can say with confidence that for a large part of the season, he did not seem comfortable attacking the ball. What I mean by that is the following: in his couples just before making the ball, he didn’t seem to move in rhythm. He led the AL with 19 errors, 13 of which came during the launch.
Last season, he was one of the best sports defenders. What he misses in high -end athletics and the strength of the arms, he caught up the supreme leg game, instincts and rhythm. It does not have the luxury of a rocket arm, which makes all these features even more important. This season, the quality of his leg game around the ball was incoherent and led to errors on the games he made in a coherent way during the first two seasons of his career, both with his glove and the precision of his arm.
Some of the defensive volpe problems could be linked to his health. He played through what was later revealed to be a labrum partially torn in his left shoulder, an injury that occurred on May 3, when he felt pop in the joint by plunging for a ball against the rays. He finally received a cortisone stroke to tackle the injury on September 10, more than four months later. Only three of his 19 errors came before injuring himself in the shoulder, and he did not make a mistake during his 12 games after his return to the field from shooting. Although the injury was not at its launch arm, it could always have affected its throws. Little stops use their left arm as a stabilizer to drive them in the right direction during the launch. Think of the basic mechanics you have taught when you are a child: point your glove on the target, go to the target, then launch the ball. If your shoulder not launched is injured, you may not be able to use it to properly start the mechanics for a precise launch. Several times, the shortcomings align the ball while moving and do not have time to plant their feet and head directly to the first base before releaseing the ball. In these cases, when the lower half of the body is neutralized, it is even more important to have a healthy arm and not launched to direct the ball. This is particularly true for shortcomings like Volpe which do not have solid arms and count on rapid release to compensate. There is no way to know how much the shoulder bother him, but that’s probably how it would have embarrassed his game.
If the shot did the trick, and if the shoulder was really the main cause of the poor diet of Volpe, the Yankees should be in a much better position entering the playoffs, when a play could make the difference between moving forward and being eliminated. He will be at the stop-COURT this evening at 6:08 p.m., when the Yankees welcome the Red Sox in match 1 of the Wild Card Best Of-Three series at the Yankee Stadium.
With all this in mind, let us break down the defensive season of Volpe to understand what went wrong and how, perhaps, all this could start again at the most important time of the year.
At this stage, we all have to know that defensive measures can be volatile, but volatility of data alone is not always an explanation for a change in defensive performance. On the contrary, the measures can tell us a lot about the reasons why the performances change, especially if they align with what our eyes tell us. So let’s start with volpe metrics during its first three seasons in the majors:
Volpe defensive metrics
| Season | Sprint Speed Centile | Percentile of the arm | Oaa | Sip | Drs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 78th | 28th | 1 | 1 | 15 |
| 2024 | 83rd | 29th | 13 | 8 | 6 |
| 2025 | 76th | 33rd | -6 | -5 | 1 |
Source: Baseball Savant & Baseball Reference
There is a certain disagreement between the OAA and the DR, but the general consensus is that Volpe was either above average, or very well defensively during its first two seasons. For the anecdote, I fully understand how the measures fell in this way. He was not entirely at the caliber of Bobby Witt Jr., whose raw physical capacity is much higher than that of Volpe, but the Copstrame of Yankees made a game after the game in all directions despite some of his weakest tools. This season, however, he is no longer done on the bullets he has done during his first two seasons:
OAA Direction Volp
| Season | In | Back | Towards 3b | Towards 1b |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| 2025 | -1 | -1 | -3 | -1 |
Source: Baseball scientist
Given his arm strength below the average, it is logical that Volpe was not so good by returning to the balls or by moving towards the third base – even if he always made the games – because these require short stops to obtain more punch on their throws. For this reason, I assumed that these pieces would be the source of his field misfortunes in 2025. And yes, he was at his worst this season when he moved away from the first goal, but his performance on these games underwent only a minor decline compared to previous years. Instead, his defense fell significantly in the two areas that were once his greatest forces: entering the bullets and moving towards his glove side.
Above, I mentioned the lack of volpe assault when arriving on the ball. This plays a direct role here. To make these games in front of you or to the first base, you must attack the balls with a pace and directional efficiency. Your leg game should be fast and decisive while pouring in your throw. This was not the case for Volpe this year:
The first two low throws above are not horrible, in the sense that a first goal player better better than Ben Rice would probably have picked them up while keeping the foot on the basis, but they are not as easy to manage, especially when you consider that rice is a converted recipient that always learns the strings at the start. Anyway, they are relatively routine floor balls for Volpe, and it should have a lot of time to make specific throws – they should be just in Rice’s chest. During the first game, Volpe moves in the ball proper until it has its final approach, when it stops momentarily to align the ball and causes its feet. This break has an impact directly on the direction it created by rounding the ball. He then opens his hips too early and loses all the real turn of his throw. The stagnation of the last two stages was a common trend this year.
In the second clip, with a grout group from Edgar Quero, Volpe stops just before moving it and cannot work gently through the ball, which stiffens its glove. Yandy Díaz’s hopper in the third video above is also strangely managed. Volpe has more time to work through the ball before coming to launch it because Díaz is not a quick runner; However, while Volpe slows down, he changed his posture several times and loses control of his body. He gets up too just before releaseing the ball, costing him juice on the throw and offering rice a short hops difficult through the diamond.
Then, in the last two videos above, Volpe largely lacks the pace that we have used to seeing him. The game-out of the Myles bat is the exact type of game where short stops can show how smooth they are. They maneuver their body towards the first base as the group approaches, allowing them to release the ball faster. Instead, Volpe Champion Le Ballon with his body tilted towards marble; As he arrives, goes through his movement and launches the ball, it is too late to get the quick straw. You can also see Volpe’s hesitation on the large helicopter. He waits for the High Hops to arrive, missing for a precious time again to throw the runner. Stops with rockets like Elly de la Cruz and Masyn Winn can afford to sit on these balls, but Volpe does not have the strength of the arm to get away.
Now let’s focus on the rooms where Volpe is heading first:
See how he does very, very big steps when he mixes? These huge movements imbalance him and fall forward. When he moves laterally or when he arrived on the ball, he should break his steps when approaching the ball; This allows inf theys to be more dynamic and control their movements, helping them to adapt to the sudden hop or the directional changes of the group. Longer stages and larger farmers make much more difficult to change the directions because there is more momentum in each movement.
The error of launching the first on Leo Jiménez Grande is a good example. On this point, and really all the throws that we have seen so far, Volpe has to straighten up after having aligned the ball to launch because it is not in good position to deliver a fort. The only way he is able to get out of these positions and make a throw is to add more mixtures, which is not ideal either because he adds more time to finish the game. Knowing that he does not want to take too long, he ends up precipitating his throwing of a sub-optimal position, which makes his hips fall too early, his arm slot and his launches to sink and bite The first basic players. An undeveloped shoulder may have aggravated things here because he couldn’t stabilize his body and direct his throw with his lead.
I first did a lot of research for this piece before receiving the cortisone stroke and sitting for five days. At the time, he was at -8 OAA. He finished the season at -6. Yes, it was a small sample of games and opportunities on the ground, but it is promised that he picked up 2 oaa after treating his injury. Here is what Volpe examined in the past two weeks:
The rhythm, the game of legs and the precision of throwing are all there. Seeing him do this in all directions was normal during his first two seasons, when Fielding was his transport tool. This propelled him to be an average player with solid soil even if his bat was slower to develop. Without that, he looked more like a player of replacement level. If the last two weeks are an indication, it is in a better place defensively, and it will be very important for the Yankees in their thrust to return to the World Series for the second consecutive season.
Esteban is a contributor’s writer at Fangraphs. One of his main pastime is to take dry hacks each time he sees a bat.
