There is no escaping the Anthony Volpe conversation that awaits the Yankees and general manager Brian Cashman this winter.
The 24-year-old’s regression continued to alarming levels in 2025, batting .212 with a .663 OPS, 19 home runs, 72 RBI, and a league-worst 19 errors in 153 games.
While some may point to the partially torn left labrum that he played through, the production from a key position simply wasn’t good enough, especially for a team looking for secondary options behind Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Cody Bellinger.
It came to a head in the Yankees’ miserable showing in the ALDS, which they lost in four games to the Toronto Blue Jays. Volpe went 1-for-15 while striking out 11 times — as non-competitive a performance as ever.
Perhaps traditional stats do not properly quantify just how much of a liability Volpe was this season. Baseball Savant’s Batting Run Value is a metric where every pitch is assigned a run value based on its outcome (ball, strike, home run), with the players’ contributions over the entire season added together.
Volpe’s teammate, Aaron Judge, led all of baseball with a Batting Run Value of 79. Out of 300 qualified hitters this season, Volpe’s mark of minus-16 ranked 289th.
When it came to Fielding Run Value, his minus-5 was tied for 241st out of a possible 249 qualified fielders.
Simply put, the Yankees need more, and the three-year runway that they have given Volpe would be deemed long enough by many. Granted, Cashman and owner Hal Steinbrenner have exuded a remarkable amount of patience, almost to the point of malpractice, in their continued faith in manager Aaron Boone.
Are there better options out there? Yes, though they might not be headline-stealing or groundbreaking.
Amed Rosario, who was acquired from the Washington Nationals, batted .276 with a .745 OPS in 63 games this season and has experience at shortstop, though his glove is not much better than Volpe’s (he also had a minus-5 Fielding Run Value).
Jose Caballero provided a jolt for the Yankees as a utility infielder, including starts at shortstop when Volpe was sidelined because of that shoulder, after he was picked up from the Tampa Bay Rays. In 40 games with New York, he posted an .828 OPS with 15 stolen bases while maintaining dependable defense.
Is a platoon of those two an upgrade from what the Yankees got out of Volpe?
Of course, they could always try their hand at big-game hunting, but the free-agent market is thin. Blue Jays star Bo Bichette is the only notable free agent this winter (unless Trevor Story opts out of his Red Sox deal), but why would he leave a team that is currently in the ALCS and just committed to a winning future by inking Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a long-term big-money extension?
As it stands, there is no clear path to a definitive upgrade, which means Cashman will have to get creative. How likely is that to happen?
