The New York Yankees dropped their second game of the season on Wednesday night with an underwhelming 4-3 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. For the most part, the club’s offense has cooled down from their red-hot opening series against the Milwaukee Brewers. The same can’t be said for franchise shortstop Anthony Volpe, who has continued to obliterate balls at a historic rate.
The 23-year-old speedster has gotten off to an electric start this year, crushing his fourth home run of the season on Wednesday night – he’s currently tied with captain Aaron Judge for the most homers on the club. But even though he’s clearing fences left and right, he isn’t necessarily swinging for them.
“I’m just trying to put the ball in play hard,” he said. “They’re just going over the fence.”
Trailing 4-0 and down to their final three outs, outfielders Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge led off the bottom of the ninth with a pair of singles. The Diamondbacks brought in left-hander A.J. Puk from the bullpen, who quickly retired Jazz Chisholm Jr. on a flyout. Digging in with runners on the corners, Volpe connected on Puk’s initial offering, lofting the ball over the short porch in right field to make it a one-run game.
But unfortunately, it was too little too late. Puk regrouped and sent down Austin Wells and Jasson Dominguez to secure the win.
Volpe’s late-game heroics marked the only highlight for the Yanks in a game where they were completely shut down by Zac Gallen and company. The 29-year-old righty threw 6.2 scoreless frames, allowing just three hits with a staggering 13 strikeouts. The club was rung up a total of 16 times, marking the first time in franchise history that the team struck out 14 times or more in consecutive home games (h/t Russ Gardiner).
Just a game prior, Volpe launched a game-tying solo shot off former NL Cy Young Corbin Burnes, pulling a first-pitch cutter into the opposing bullpen.
During his rookie season in 2023, Volpe became the first Yankee freshman to hit 20 home runs and steal 20 bases in the same season. Coincidentally, his swing that made history was a ninth-inning, three-run blast that got spoiled in a 4-3 loss.
Volpe didn’t exactly make the sophomore leap that the organization was hoping for, hitting just .243 with a .657 OPS (86 OPS+) and 12 home runs in 2024. However, he caught fire in the postseason, wielding a .286 average with an .815 OPS, an effort that was punctuated by a go-ahead grand slam in Game 4 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Through just five games in 2025, Volpe is already a third of the way to matching his home run total from last season. He’s hitting .200 with a whopping 1.073 OPS, with all four of his hits having gone over the fence.
Yankee manager Aaron Boone believes his shortstop has been hitting the ball much better than his average would suggest, adding that Volpe has gotten unlucky with some of the balls he’s hit in play.
“I can think of three balls off the top of my head that he’s hit on the screws for outs,” said Yankee manager Aaron Boone in his postgame interview. “That’s just early in the season. If you’re going to square them up, you might as well drive them out.”
Like many of his teammates, Volpe raised eyebrows with his usage of the torpedo bat, an innovative hitting tool that distributes the bulk of the wood to where the player makes the most contact. While the bats are legal and other teams are using them too, the Yankees drew the most criticism after they hit an MLB-record-tying 15 home runs in their opening three-game series against the Brew Crew.
“No control over it,” Volpe said of the negative discourse surrounding the bats. “I think one of the things that we’re going to do in this organization and this team is to try to be as best as we possibly can be. If we find any way we can improve, whether it’s 1% or one-tenth of a percent, we’re going to try and do it. We have a really good culture and really good communication to help people buy in, explain, and help us out on the field, so it’s cool that it’s translating.”
