Anthony Volpe's struggles reach 120-year low ever since Yankees started addressing problem

Things have been pretty bad all-around for New York Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe recently. From purportedly objective MLB news website The Score taking shots at his defense, to a brief benching thanks to his brutal performance at the plate, to his manager standing beside him (but leaving himself some wiggle room), it's been rough times for the 24-year-old.

Just when you couldn't think things could get bleaker, Volpe put together another 0-4 night in his return to the starting lineup Tuesday, followed by an 0-for-5 in the Yankees' blowout win on Wednesday. To say he's been struggling hard at the plate during his last 10 games would be an understatement.

In fact, Volpe's 10-game stretch will go down in Yankees history, an impressive feat considering the franchise's lengthy timeline. From August 15 through August 26, Volpe logged 33 plate appearances with just one hit and no walks, good for a .031 on-base percentage, the worst in franchise history (non-pitcher, minimum 30 plate appearances) since 1905.

Anthony Volpe's new low is something that has gone unmatched in Yankee history for 120 years

The Yankees began life as the New York Highlanders in 1903. They became christened the Yankees in 1913, meaning that technically, the only man in franchise history with a worse mark than Volpe, Dave Fultz, was never technically a Yankee.

Fultz's atrocious .029 OBP over a 10-game stretch came in 1905, the final year of his seven-year big league career. Fultz was born in 1875; just let that sink in for a moment.

Back to Volpe, the anointed one has reached new depths of ineptitude. During this ice-cold stretch, he can't even point his finger at bad luck, with 36.4% of his at-bats over these last 10 games ending in a strikeout.

This brutal stretch has erased a lot of the goodwill that the New Jersey native earned during his homer-fueled rampage to begin the season's second half, and put him squarely in the crosshairs of fed-up Yankee fans who are tired of watching the franchise's golden boy struggle to live up to his billing as an immensely talented, high baseball-IQ player.

Volpe won't be this bad forever. But with his current performance amping up the microscope that he was already under, we'll soon see if he is, in fact, as mentally tough as Aaron Boone has repeatedly declared, or if this is the final breaking point for the once-prized prospect.

Volpe isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and it's legitimately hard to say whether or not that is a good or bad thing... for him, the Yankees, and the blood pressure of New Yorkers.