Yankees' handling of Anthony Volpe feels so wrong after demotion, position switch

It wasn't too long ago that Anthony Volpe was starting at shortstop for the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series. When Volpe delivered a clutch grand slam in Game 4, not a Yankees fan alive could have imagined where Volpe's career would head over the next couple of years.

Sure, there were plenty of people who (rightfully) assumed that Volpe would never validate the potential that he flashed during his Gold Glove rookie season of 2023. Those same people probably thought Volpe would keep declining and maybe even ultimately lose his job as the everyday shortstop for the Yankees.

That has indeed happened, but the manner of it all is stranger than any of us could've seen coming. Now 25 years old and with plenty of huge MLB moments under his belt, Volpe has been demoted to Triple-A Scranton, where he's currently working with RailRiders bench coach Gil Velasquez on the fundamentals of playing second base.

The Yankees' World Series shortstop is now learning to play second base in the minors (his name is Anthony Volpe)

It's obvious what the Yankees are doing here. They're preparing for a post-Jazz Chisholm Jr. future (next year) in which Volpe might play second base for the Yankees alongside George Lombard Jr. at short.

Still, the optics of this entire situation are, and forever will be, pretty tough to defend from an organizational standpoint.

Why did the Yankees wait so long to develop Anthony Volpe's defensive versatility?

The Yankees should have been giving Volpe reps at second base (and other positions) at least a year ago. For whatever reason, the Yanks tattooed into their collective organizational mind that Volpe was destined to be the true successor to Derek Jeter, through rain or shine. They'd found their next shortstop for the next 10-plus years, no matter what the results right in front of them were.

Except they hadn't, and they continually refused to admit that they hadn't, even as the months and years of evidence piled up.

Amid Volpe's declining offense and glove, virtually every other MLB team would've budged from their initial stance on Volpe and begun experimenting. This would look like working with Volpe at other positions or even restarting his development entirely by sending him to Triple A for a fresh start. This would've been completely normal a year or even two into his MLB career. Not four.

We know that Volpe's willing to play anywhere. He's even joked that he'd play catcher to help the team. This isn't a situation where the organization has to tiptoe around a player's ego so as not to upset him. The Yankees simply chose to pigeonhole Volpe in a position where he was never fully equipped to thrive, and they consistently doubled and tripled down on that decision in the face of declining play and poor results. What was the point?

The entire Anthony Volpe saga makes the Yankees look foolish

When you zoom out and summarize basically what we're looking at, it's a World Series shortstop learning to play second base at Triple-A two years after the fact.

This makes absolutely no sense and simply doesn't happen in Major League Baseball, and for good reason. If Volpe had taken second base reps in 2023 or even 2024, this would be a small story; it would be called player development. At this point, it can only be called damage control.

Even if you're not a fan of Anthony Volpe, even if you don't root for him at all, you have to admit that he's been mishandled by the Yankees.

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