Cashman And Boone Have Set Up Yankees Shortstop Anthony Volpe To Fail

It’s absurd that the Yankees can just take a player at his word. Of course, tough ballplayers are going to push through the most brutal of injuries to the point of subjecting themselves to further damage – and that’s exactly what happened to Volpe.

On Tuesday, the 24-year-old former Gold Glove winner underwent a left shoulder arthroscopic labral repair. He is expected to hit again in roughly four months and won’t be able to dive on his shoulder for six months.

Yankees Mismanaged Volpe's Injury

On May 3, Volpe heard a pop when he performed a diving play against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium.

During the season, he twice received cortisone injections. Cashman stated in September that surgery or a stint on the injured list wasn’t likely.

Everyone as far back as the upper grandstand could see that Volpe was laboring through the final months of the season and postseason. He couldn’t hit and he couldn’t field. It was staring the Yankees in the face and they still trotted him out at shortstop.

Volpe should have been shut down. Any properly functioning ballclub wouldn’t have sent out Volpe in that condition and risked further damage to his shoulder, especially when the Yankees had acquired Jose Caballero to serve as Volpe’s understudy.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone and Cashman need to understand that because their players will run through a wall to remain in the lineup, someone has to be the responsible adult in the room who tells them they have to sit out to prevent further injury.

As long as the “rub some dirt on it and play” culture exists, there will be future Yankees who will expose themselves to having their careers altered or shortened in situations where further harm to existing injuries could have been prevented. That’s because it’s happened before.

Yankees Have a Record of Misdiagnosing Injuries

There’s no team in baseball that misdiagnoses injuries more frequently than the Yankees. 

Remember when Alex Rodriguez filed a lawsuit after a team doctor failed to diagnose his hip injury during the 2012 playoffs?

How about when Anthony Rizzo had a brutal collision at first base back on May 28, 2023? Sure, Rizzo passed the initial concussion testing – but he began exhibiting slower reaction times while dealing with symptoms that he described as similar to a hangover.

When Boone was asked later that August if he considered taking Rizzo out of the lineup, he flatly replied: “No.” 

Rizzo was never the same. His career was over at age 34.

You can’t just keep getting these situations wrong.

If owner Hal Steinbrenner cares about the long-term health of his players, he should order a full audit of the team’s medical staff while also quizzing Cashman and Boone about their actions.

This isn't the way that a team should treat a former No. 1 prospect, who arrived in the majors with expectations of developing into a franchise shortstop.

We’re talking about multi-million dollar ballplayers here, who aren’t just investments. They’re people at the end of the day. At some point, they will have lives after their playing days are over.

Cashman said that his players have some kind of superhuman ability to shrug off pain and play through debilitating injuries. They don’t. They’re actually people, just like the rest of us.