Yankees' Anthony Volpe defense officially reaches nasty low point after Red Sox mess

Anthony Volpe is far from the sole focus of blame these days, especially in the wake of the Yankees' latest snooze-filled defeat at the hands of the Boston Red Sox on Friday night in the Bronx. Needing to win only two games to maintain their advantage and a single contest to hold onto a loss-column tie, the Yankees instead frittered away a one-run lead and made four errors on Thursday, then extended their scoreless streak to 13 innings against Brayan Bello in their second loss of the set the next day. The bar was on the floor for the Yanks coming off five consecutive losses to the Sox, and they're still struggling mightily to clear it.

That's not on Volpe. It's on the entire offense, one-through-nine. It's on the manager who can't seem to figure out what his lefty-mashing bench is for. It's on a sloppy Jazz Chisholm. It's on Mark Leiter Jr. It's certainly on Camilo Doval.

But Chisholm was benched on Saturday following some suspect defense and poor at-bats, something that never seems to happen to their third-year shortstop (who always performs a little better after being given a breather anyhow). Volpe, who Brian Cashman swore was going to level up in Year 2, is still searching for the gear that makes him "f***ing elite," in Aaron Boone's ill-conceived words.

The issue isn't the player - well, no. Sorry, it is the player, who's gone 1-for-25 after a second-half-opening homer binge, and threw behind the runner at second base on a tailor-made ground ball for some reason on Friday (a play his manager defender), recording no outs in the process. Volpe isn't the only Yankee struggling, but he's behind the vast majority of their oddest plays, and has quickly become indefensible - except in the minds of the Yankees' brass.

Clearly, Boone and Co. have attempted to deflect the spotlight from the struggling prospect-turned-suspect they put so much faith in. But it's backfired. Spectacularly. And Friday-into-Saturday, in the midst of what feels like another lost series against an AL East rival, feels like the boiling point of pushback.

Yankees can't ignore Anthony Volpe problem they've created any longer

That's three. Three columns questioning the way the Yankees have coddled Volpe from reputable beat writers in the wake of the same game, a game packed with narratives to latch onto. A game in which every single pinstriped personage let the program down. A game in which the effort was so flat and hideous that the team required a unilateral reset button. And yet, there was still one element of the Yankees' malfeasance that was so emblematic of the larger whole that every single writer couldn't help but feast upon it.

Volpe is drowning, and the Yankees seem both ill-equipped to save him and somehow satisfied with his current level of gasping for air. It's not the only Yankees story, but it's the only one the Yankees refuse to acknowledge.

And, ahead of Game 3 against Boston - a game the Yankees enter with a 4-14 record against over .500 AL East teams this year, their fifth out of the past six seasons with an under-.500 mark in such circumstances - it's the clearest distillation yet of the franchise's broken process. Sorry. Can't run from it any longer. And cannot continue to lie.