The 2026 Yankees have a lot riding on their stars repeating the quality seasons that they put up in 2025, but there\u2019s a select few that they would like to see rebounds from. No one fits that latter category more than Anthony Volpe, who was brutally bad at the plate for months at a time and endured a dreadful season at shortstop for the first time after posting excellent defense at a minimum in his previous two seasons. Of course, now we know that he was playing through a shoulder injury for most of the year, but a third-straight underwhelming season offensively has put him in the hot seat entering 2026.<\/p>\n
Volpe\u2019s expected to miss the start of the season as he recovers from shoulder surgery, but he should be ready to go sometime around May-June. When he returns, it\u2019s likely that the Yankees will give him the starting shortstop gig back unless Jos\u00e9 Caballero manages to put on an otherworldly performance in his stead. Should he disappoint a fourth time in a row, even a Yankees front office that has been enamored with Volpe\u2019s potential for years would find it prudent to chase an upgrade, but what would qualify as a \u201cgood\u201d season for Volpe, or at least good enough to warrant keeping him in the plans for the future?<\/p>\n
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One of the biggest detriments for Volpe has been his inability to get on base, whether that\u2019s because he\u2019s struggled to generate good contact or work walks. Getting above a .300 OBP mark isn\u2019t exactly a sign of a future star, but it would be a first for Volpe in his career if he could do so this year. Getting on the basepaths would enable him to use one of his best tools as well \u2014 his speed. Volpe started his career red-hot timing steal attempts, nabbing 13 bags without getting caught by May. Since then he\u2019s struggled to pick his spots, perhaps because of how inconsistently he\u2019s had the opportunity to, and it resulted in him taking just 18 bags last year. Jumping back into that 25-30 range of steals would go a long way to making the bottom of the Yankees\u2019 lineup more threatening.<\/p>\n
Of course there\u2019s always the question of Volpe\u2019s power. He aimed to drive the ball out of the park in his rookie campaign, hit a respectable 21 bombs but struggled to do much else on contact, and then flipped his strategy completely in 2024 becoming more of an even-plane swinger. His power plummeted, and the tradeoff didn\u2019t do too much for his ability to find the gap as he hit .243 and bumped his OBP up only 10 points despite the sizeable batting average jump. Last year he went into the season aiming for more of a middle ground, but the injury prevented him from showcasing whether he had found a suitable way to attack pitchers. Perhaps a jump in statistical performance wouldn\u2019t be as big of an indicator for a good year for Volpe so much as merely finding consistency and knowing that he\u2019s found his form at last. Is there a particular benchmark you\u2019d set for Volpe that he\u2019d need to beat to regain some faith, or is it all in how comfortable he looks at the dish? Let us know what you think.<\/p>\n
On the site today, Andr\u00e9s leads off with a look at Michael Kopech as a high-risk, high-reward option for the bullpen. Then, Sam wishes the Bambino a happy birthday and looks at the lasting legacy he\u2019s cast on the sport, Michael gives us the day\u2019s season preview focused on Oswaldo Cabrera, and Estev\u00e3o takes us back to the infamous Jacoby Ellsbury signing ahead of the 2014 season. Later on in the day, I\u2019ll be back to answer your latest questions in our mailbag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Yankees have a lot riding on their stars repeating the quality seasons that they put up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":570347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[5243,1276,248092,1936,194772,61866,26805,1266,405,2228,5228,248093,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-570346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-anthony-volpe","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-dreadful-season","tag-getty-images","tag-jacoby-ellsbury","tag-jose-caballero","tag-michael-kopech","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-ny","tag-oswaldo-cabrera","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116023398459131268","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}