I Don't Understand the Anthony Volpe Negativity

by EJ Fagan

May 2025

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission. This was published a few days ago so the stats don't include the last few games.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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Anthony Volpe had a rough series against the Mets, going 2-12 with one walk and three strikeouts. It wasn’t surprising to see the Talkin’ Yanks crew give him a hard time because that’s normal for a player who had a not-so-great series.

But I was surprised with some of the negativity about Volpe as a MLB player, because he has been really good in 2025.

Before I start, I don’t want to pick on Jomboy specifically too much here. I see a lot of similar Volpe takes on social media and podcasts. But I’ve seen some version of the same negative take from Jimmy and Jake a lot since Volpe entered the league, so they stand in for a broader discourse.

The smart take on Volpe in 2024 was basically: he’s a bad hitter who contributes so much on defense to be a plus player overall. Both Fangraphs and Baseball Reference had him at more than 3 wins in 2024 despite hitting .243/.293/.364 (86 wRC+). 2024 Volpe definitely should be an 8-9 hole hitter, but was still a well above average MLB player. For reference, Teoscar Hernandez averaged just under 3.0 bWAR per season from 2021-2025.

But that take is outdated, at least so far in 2025. Anthony Volpe has hit .235/.323/.422 (112 wRC+) in 2025. His defense and baserunning have slipped a bit, but Fangraphs and Baseball Reference still peg him at 1.2 and 1.5 WAR respectively, on track for a 5 WAR season. That’s pretty awesome! Willy Adames was a 4.8 bWAR player in 2024, which was the best season of his career.

But I want to address some of their specific arguments:

Jimmy and Jake make two specific arguments about Volpe. First, that his season-long numbers are inflated by a great first week. They point out that Volpe has just a .652 OPS after a hot first week.

Here’s my response: a lot of average-ish MLB players would have bad numbers if you took out their best week! Butter-knifing is dangerous. But if we want play that game, we can find alternative butter-knives. You might think of Volpe’s season this way:

• From 3/27 to 4/5, he got hot and hit .303/.361/.758

• From 4/6 to 4/20, he went into a deep slump and hit .149/.268/.191

• From 4/21 to present, he recovered and hit a very solid .256/.340/.419

• From 4/21 to before the Mets series, he was hitting .270/.368/.446

  
  

Another way to talk about Volpe’s 2025 season is that he’s been pretty excellent other than a two week slump. But those are arbitrary cut points. If you dissect almost anyone’s MLB season, you’ll find periods of slumps and hot streaks. It all aggregates out to some level of production, and for Volpe in 2025 that has been overall above average. Combine that with solid defense at shortstop and you get one of the better players in baseball.

The second is that Volpe “doesn’t have an approach at the plate.” This criticism can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Let’s look at the Statcast page:

Volpe’s been mildly unlucky so far - his .341 xwOBA is better than his .323 wOBA. Everything else is pretty fine - he hits the ball a little harder than average, strikes out a lot more than average and takes a lot of walks. His speed and especially defense are down a tick from last year, but he could revert back to form given a larger sample.

His best skill is that he is one of the best hitters in baseball at not swinging at balls outside of the strike zone - swinging at just 20% of balls outside the zone. That’s a huge improvement from last year, when he swung at 29%.

Is that a bad approach at the plate? It seems fine to me. His 2024 approach wasn’t working, so he went back to the swing-harder, miss-more approach that worked for him in the minors in 2022. He’s no Derek Jeter, but it’s working.

So why the negativity? I think one factor is that baseball fans haven’t internalized just how bad hitters are right now. The average American League batter is hitting just .241/.311/.391 in 2025. Volpe’s .745 OPS might seem pedestrian if your reference point is, say, the average batter of the late-2000s (in 2009, the average batter hit .267/.336/.428), but it’s a great performance for a plus defensive shortstop. Hence, the 5-win pace. If you had a team full of Anthony Volpe clones, they would be the 4th best hitting team in the AL.

I also think that expectations played a role. Anthony Volpe got a lot of hype before hitting the majors. He was a top-15 prospect in all of baseball. He was below average during his rookie season, above average last year and so far pretty good in 2025. Those results might feel a little disappointing if you were expecting Gunnar Henderson (who has been worse than Volpe this year by bWAR) or Derek Jeter or something.

But that’s not fair to him. The player I think about a lot when I think about Anthony Volpe is JJ Hardy - a good defensive shortstop who was a slightly below average hitter for his career.

Hardy retired after 13 years and 28 bWAR, consistency putting up between 3.0 and 4.5 bWAR per season in his prime. That’s a winning player, but not the centerpiece of your championship team.

Finally, I think that a lot of the criticism of 2025 Volpe is aesthetic. He’s a fast-ish 5’9” shortstop, so he should a high average, low power guy, right? Hit the ball on the ground, Willie Mays Hayes! Volpe has been the opposite in 2025. That feels weird, but it’s not fake. He really is swinging harder and getting more exit velocity than most major league players.

So let’s all give Anthony Volpe a break. He’s a big reason why the Yankees are in first place.