NEW YORK — The Yankees are about to face a roster squeeze, and the popular assumption is that a young outfielder will pay the price. Look closer, though, and a different name keeps surfacing. If the Yankees truly reward performance, the player feeling the heat may be a former Gold Glove shortstop, not a rookie slugger.
That sets up an uncomfortable crossroads for Anthony Volpe, one that could redefine his standing on a team trying to stay afloat without Aaron Judge.
A returning bat forces a choice
The trigger is Jasson Dominguez. With the outfielder’s rehab assignment underway and his return to the Yankees drawing near, someone on the roster will have to go to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. On the surface, the move looks obvious.
Because the Yankees are already stocked with outfielders, the easy assumption is that Spencer Jones gets sent down. He and Dominguez would be competing for the same playing time. But if the Yankees stick to a merit-based approach, the analysis suggests Jones is not the player who has earned a demotion. The harder, more honest look points elsewhere on the roster.
That is where Volpe enters the conversation. Beyond a memorable hit against the Kansas City Royals and an occasional home run, he has not made much of a positive impact, and the long-standing red flags in his game keep resurfacing every time he takes the field.
Two telling moments against Boston
Here is what crystallized the concern. In the 6-1 win against the Red Sox, a specific Volpe moments stood out for all the wrong reasons. It captured why his roster spot is no longer secure.
The first was a throw to first base that exposed his lack of arm strength. The ball drifted weakly out of his hand and short-hopped in front of Paul Goldschmidt, who had to scoop it from the dirt to record the out. Without Goldschmidt’s skill at the bag, the ball might have rolled away entirely. It was the kind of throw a player like Jose Caballero simply does not make unless his footing is badly compromised.
The numbers reinforce the eye test. Volpe sits in just the 20th percentile in arm strength this season, down from the 33rd percentile last year and the 29th percentile in 2024. His average throwing velocity has dipped to 79 mph after sitting around 80 in past seasons, a clear sign of regression in an area where he already struggled.
A revealing at-bat in the ninth
The second moment came in the Yankees’ 5-3 loss to the Red Sox was just as telling. Volpe stepped in against Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman in the ninth inning of a game the Yankees were trying to claw back into.
Chapman had just walked Max Schuemann and was fighting his command. Yet he challenged Volpe with three straight fastballs down the heart of the plate. Volpe watched all three without swinging and was called out on strikes in a three-pitch at-bat. The sequence read like a show of disrespect, with Chapman betting that Volpe would not do damage even on hittable pitches. The bet paid off.
For a player whose offense has been streaky at best, freezing on three middle-middle fastballs in a high-leverage spot only deepened the questions about what he reliably provides.
Why the math points to Volpe
Step back, and the roster logic becomes clear. Sending Volpe down rather than Jones would make the Yankees a more athletic and flexible team, which matters with the lineup already thinned by injuries.
In that scenario, Caballero slides back to shortstop, and the Yankees deploy Jones or Dominguez in right field, with the speedy Jones offering value as a pinch runner whose legs have already won games this season. Volpe, by contrast, brings a streaky bat and a defensive liability, and the Yankees would not be exposed at shortstop in his absence. Both Schuemann and Amed Rosario have experience there in a pinch.
There is also precedent for keeping a young player like Jones around for development. The Yankees have historically valued letting prospects absorb big league experience alongside veterans, much as they did with Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada in 1995 and Oswald Peraza in 2022. Sharing a dugout with a group of former MVPs like Judge, Bellinger, Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton would only help Jones, who could stick around at least until Stanton returns.
“The Anthony Volpe yearly mistake of an experiment should be over,” Gary Sheffield Jr. wrote. “Leave him on the bench to fill in just in case Caballero, the starting shortstop, should injure himself. Doesn’t matter if he changed his walk up song — he’s not good.”
None of this guarantees the Yankees will make the unconventional call. Volpe remains a former Gold Glove winner and a homegrown piece the organization has invested in heavily. But the merit-based argument is hard to ignore. As Dominguez nears his return, Anthony Volpe faces a major career tension, and how the Yankees resolve it will say a lot about how they value performance over reputation.
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