Anthony Volpe is back in Triple-A, but the strange part isn’t just the demotion. It’s what he’s doing there.
The 25-year-old, who was starting at shortstop for the Yankees in the 2024 World Series and delivered that clutch grand slam in Game 4, is now working with RailRiders bench coach Gil Velazquez on the basics of playing second base. Last week, New York optioned Volpe to Scranton, and now the organization is asking him to learn a new spot in the infield after years of treating him like a locked-in shortstop.
That’s the twist in this whole story. The Yankees appear to be setting up for a future without Jazz Chisholm Jr. next year, with Volpe potentially sliding to second base and George Lombard Jr. taking over at short.
On paper, that’s a plan. In practice, it also reads like a late correction to a decision the club should have started making much earlier.
The biggest issue is timing. Volpe should have been getting work at second base, and maybe elsewhere, at least a year ago.
Instead, the Yankees seemed committed to the idea that he was their long-term answer at shortstop no matter what the results said. They had already decided he was the next Derek Jeter successor, and they stuck with that belief even as his production and defense slipped.
That’s what makes this so hard to defend. As Volpe’s offense declined and his glove followed, most teams would have adjusted.
They would have tested him at another position or sent him back to Triple-A sooner for a reset. That kind of course correction would have been normal a year or two into his career.
Four years in, it feels far less like development and a lot more like cleanup.
Volpe, for his part, has never sounded like a player boxed in by ego. He’s been willing to move around, even joking that he’d play catcher if it helped the team.
So this isn’t about protecting a fragile fit. It’s about an organization choosing to keep him in one lane, then finally broadening the road after the fact.
Strip it down, and the picture is blunt: a World Series shortstop is learning second base in the minors two years too late. If this had happened in 2023 or 2024, it would have looked like smart development. Now it only looks like damage control.
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