Yankees Can't Ignore Anthony Volpe Problem Any Longer

You appreciate them giving a chance to a homegrown player, because for years, it felt like they would rather go with veterans than their own prospects. Just look at the season where they kept Isiah Kiner-Falefa in at short, and didn't make the change until the ALCS. That takes a special type of stubbornness to do, and keeping Volpe in there is just as stubborn. It could be more so because the sample size of his bat is 1,808 plate appearances with a .661 OPS.

Yankees Being The Yankees

Stubborn does feel like the Yankee Way. It is a tradition that outlasted even the grooming policy. These Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman-led Yankees will ride guys until the wheels have fallen off, and the team is dragging that metaphorical vehicle themselves, trying to make up for what a negative asset brings to the field. DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Hicks are two examples of players who overstayed their welcome, and in Hicks' case, his defense became increasingly paltry toward the end. He famously stared at a ball in left field, thinking it was foul.

Alex Verdugo was another egregious example. By the time the World Series rolled around, and he was dancing at the top step to Ice Cube, who was ripping him and his team, it made you wonder if the guy the Yankee brass was sticking with was actually a Los Angeles plant. Now that Trent Grisham is on his way to a thirty-home run season, and fans were treated to Verdugo's noodle bat for an entire season, it's a head scratcher as to why he was out there for as long as he was. It makes less sense when you realize that Aaron Judge's centerfield defense was statistically abhorrent, and it was as if the Baseball Gods chastised the Yankees for this during that World Series fifth inning.

This is all to say that Volpe being left on the field as he has, butchering slow grounders, and rolling up to the lineup with a .662 OPS is expected at this point. It becomes big news when he rides the bench for two days, because the Yankees' having a meritocracy feels like an outlier. The unfortunate thing for Volpe is that he will carry the brunt of the boos. It's indeed on him, and it is his play, but it should be up to Boone and Cashman to remove him from the lineup. The player will never take himself out of the game, so those boos should be directed at them. He has 18 errors, and it should never have gotten to that point. They don't care, though. It feels like both have a job for life. There is no urgency. It's the Yankee Way.

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