Let's Stop Pretending Anthony Volpe Is Good

I am tired of this Anthony Volpe experiment.  The dude can’t play at the major league level.  So painful.  Last night with yet another opportunity to tie it up for the Yankees or even extend the inning, Anthony Volpe strikes out.  It’s a pathetic showing for a player that was brought up too fast and is on his way to being a lifetime .230 hitter in the major leagues.  Anthony Volpe is a bust.  Plain and simple.  This guy has to go.

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop babying. Let’s stop handing out participation trophies and telling ourselves Anthony Volpe is “just figuring it out.” He’s not. What he is, is a confused, overwhelmed, underperforming shortstop who is absolutely drowning under the weight of Yankee pinstripes. And Aaron Boone—baseball’s most enthusiastic enabler—is sitting there like a proud Little League dad, clapping from the dugout while the rest of us watch this disaster unfold.

Let’s call it like it is: Anthony Volpe is hot garbage. Not a little off. Not “in a slump.” Garbage. His at-bats are cringe, his glove has turned into a liability, and when the Yankees need someone to step up in big moments, Volpe is stepping out of the batter’s box—usually after strike three.

Take that disaster against the Angels. Bases loaded, eighth inning, one out. Routine ground ball to short. Volpe boots it like he’s trying to send it back to Somerset. Then, for good measure, he misfires the throw to second. Two-run swing. Ballgame. You know what Boone had to say afterward?

“Just didn’t handle the ball.”

No kidding, Skip. What an insight. You’ve got the fanbase screaming at their TVs, and this guy’s giving us fortune cookie quotes.

Volpe is now 0-for-15 over the last four games. His season line is a sad .235/.307/.419. And he’s struck out a lot. Like, career-worst levels of strikeouts. And when are those K’s happening? Not in meaningless blowouts, but with runners on, in big moments. The kind of moments real Yankees deliver in. But Volpe? He folds like a paper straw in a milkshake.

And let’s talk about Boone again, because he deserves a whole chapter in this horror novel. This guy talks about Volpe like he’s Derek Jeter mixed with his childhood teddy bear. Volpe makes an error? Boone blames the baseball. Volpe goes down swinging on three pitches? Boone tells the media how “he just missed one.” Bro, he missed three. Sit down.

And for all the people saying “But Volpe has 20 doubles!”—great. Print that stat on a T-shirt and sell it in the Bronx Zoo gift shop, because it sure as hell isn’t helping the Yankees win games. You know what would help? A shortstop who can make a routine play and drive in a run when it counts. The Yankees have now lost six straight, and Volpe hasn’t even accidentally contributed to a win.

Enough with the coddling. Enough with the nonsense about “development.” This is the New York Yankees. We don’t rebuild. We don’t do tryouts in June. And we definitely don’t give starting jobs to guys who look like they belong in a Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp uniform.

Bench him. Or trade him. Send him to Miami, where the pressure is lighter and the stadium’s half empty by the third inning. Volpe’s not a Yankee. He’s not even a clutch ballplayer. He’s a project. A failed one. And every game Boone keeps trotting him out there is another nail in the coffin of this season.

Let me be perfectly clear: Anthony Volpe might become a good ballplayer one day. But he isn’t one now. And Aaron Boone is too incompetent to admit that. The Yankees are sinking, and Boone’s too busy handing out hugs in the clubhouse. Grow a spine, Boone. This isn’t daycare. It’s the damn Bronx.

Do your job. Bench Volpe. Or better yet? Ship him out.