THE BRONX, N.Y. — He was supposed to be the Yankees’ steal of the trade deadline. A 40-plus stolen base threat who arrived from Tampa Bay last July and hit .266 in pinstripes down the stretch. A player who led all of MLB in stolen bases in 2025 with 49 and earned the Yankees’ everyday shortstop job by default when Anthony Volpe went on the injured list to open 2026.
Nine games in, Jose Caballero looks nothing like that player.
Through the first week and a half of the Yankees’ season, Caballero is posting a .398 OPS with just one RBI. His average bat speed entering the season was 69.1 mph, below the league average of 71.7 mph. He came to spring training with an offseason focus on bat speed development at Driveline Baseball, targeting 71 mph for 2026. That target has not shown up in the results.
His throwing has created problems too. A high throw on Heriberto Hernandez’s grounder in Sunday’s 7-6 loss to the Marlins allowed the runner to reach safely and helped the Marlins chip away at the Yankees’ lead. Manager Aaron Boone has acknowledged the issue diplomatically, noting that Caballero has quick-release ability but that accuracy has wavered in the early going.
“He’s got that ability to have a quick release with it,” Boone said. “He’s thrown a few balls that haven’t been the most accurate. Ben has picked him up a few times, but we trust him.”
They trust him. But how long that trust holds depends on what happens next month.
The preseason promise has not shown up at the plate
The Caballero who went 2-for-4 with a stolen base in the season opener against San Francisco on March 25 looked like the player the Yankees had signed to a one-year, two-million-dollar contract. That performance generated genuine optimism. SNY analyst Phillip Martinez pointed to the early sample as evidence of a player settling into a role he was ready for.
That early optimism has faded quickly.
According to Statcast’s 2026 data, Caballero’s average exit velocity sits at 78.5 mph with a hard-hit rate of just 23.5 percent. His expected wOBA of .206 tells the same story his actual wOBA of .193 does: this is not a player hitting the ball with any authority. For a shortstop already known to carry a below-average bat, those numbers represent an even steeper fall from what was needed.
Caballero has never hit above .236 in a major league regular season and has never hit more than nine home runs in a year. The Yankees knew that coming in. What they hoped for was discipline at the plate and speed on the bases. He has three steals through nine games, which is an acceptable pace. But the offensive profile needs to be at least functional for the rest of the lineup to breathe. Right now it is not.
His strikeout and contact numbers are trending in the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time.
Volpe is coming, and his job may not be waiting
Anthony Volpe began live batting practice on April 1 and is expected to start a minor league rehab assignment around the second week of April. If there are no setbacks, a return to the Yankees’ active roster around May 1 is the current target.
On the surface, that return should mean Caballero moves to a utility role and Volpe reclaims shortstop. That was always the plan.
Volpe, 25, spent most of 2025 playing through a partial left shoulder tear that dragged down both his offense and his defense. He hit .212 with a .663 OPS on the season, led the American League with 19 errors, and ended up needing arthroscopic labral repair in October. The procedure turned out to be more involved than the pre-surgery MRI had suggested.
Yankees GM Brian Cashman said he believed the shoulder was affecting Volpe far more than anyone realized during the season. The Yankees are still optimistic about what a healthy Volpe can be. But the organization has planted a flag: production matters, and the starting job is not guaranteed on the basis of pedigree alone.
If Caballero is still batting under .200 when Volpe is cleared to play, the conversation about starting shortstop gets much more complicated than anyone would like.
“I believe in Volpe,” Cashman said in December. “And when he comes back, I still believe everything that we felt about him before his surgery. I’m happy we have Cabby as well.”
Lombard Jr. is watching from Double-A, and he is already making noise
There is a third option waiting in the system, and he made his presence felt on the first day of the minor league season.
George Lombard Jr., the Yankees’ No. 1 prospect and the 28th overall pick in the 2023 draft, opened his 2026 campaign at Double-A Somerset on April 3 by going five-for-five with a home run. He hit the ball hard all night and missed completing a cycle only by falling short of a triple. It was the first five-hit game of his professional career.
The 20-year-old son of former big leaguer George Lombard started 2026 back at Double-A, a conservative assignment given that some in the industry expected the Yankees to push him to Triple-A Scranton right away. The organization decided to let him prove himself at the Double-A level before accelerating the timeline.
If he tears through Double-A in April, a promotion to Triple-A Scranton could come quickly. And if both Caballero and Volpe are failing to hold down the position by midsummer, the Yankees have a prospect who may already be more ready than his prospect ranking suggests.
The path is unlikely, at least for now. The most likely scenario for Lombard remains 2027 for a full-time major league role. But events have a way of accelerating timelines, and the Yankees have already shown this spring they are willing to think competitively at every position.
Three players, one position, and no settled answer
The Yankees enter Tuesday’s series opener against the Athletics with the shortstop question more open than anyone expected nine games into the season.
Caballero has the job right now, and three stolen bases in nine games is exactly what he was brought in to do. But a .398 OPS, a high throwing error, and a strikeout rate that concerns the coaching staff are not what the Yankees need from their everyday shortstop.
Volpe, once the organization’s top prospect and a Gold Glove winner in his rookie year, is two weeks from a rehab assignment and a month from a potential return. His job is supposed to be there when he gets back. Whether it is depends on what the next four weeks look like for Caballero.
And Lombard, a 20-year-old with tools that Cashman himself says are already big-league ready on the defensive side, is down in Somerset hitting baseballs very hard and watching all of it.
The Yankees wanted to avoid a messy shortstop situation in 2026. They are nine games in, and one is forming anyway.
What do you think? Who should the Yankees trust as no. 1 shortstop?
