Are Anthony Volpe and the Yankees for real? | Baseball Bar-B-Cast
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman look at some of the early returns from The Bronx as the Yankees start the season winning 8-of-10 games. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: The Yankees looking-- looking pretty good. They're looking pretty good.
JAKE MINTZ: They're good. The Yankees are good. Are they great? We'll see. Are they bad? I don't think so. Time will maybe prove me wrong.
But there's enough here on the offensive side. I think my biggest worry with them going into the year was who's the third best hitter on this team after Judge and Soto? And I think the early returns are Stanton looks better. He looks better early. He looks a little bit more athletic and trimmed down.
I mean, maybe we're going to get a Giancarlo Stanton hamstring pop news alert in 25 seconds. We'll see. But the one I'm really excited about is Anthony Volpe. Like, he-- I think that we, as an industry-- like, the kid was 22 last year, right? And he was kind of an offensive nothing for a lot of the year, especially in the first half. But again, he was 22. And so if Anthony Volpe, who has been spectacular so far this season, is like an 870 OPS guy, I would not be surprised.
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: I mean, that would be--
JAKE MINTZ: Like--
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: That would be--
JAKE MINTZ: I mean, that's pretty high. Let me take that back. No, I take it back-- 820. Like, if he's a well above average hitter, that is a huge deal for this team and totally doable.
JORDAN SHUSTERMAN: Yes. And I just highlighted Volpe when I wrote last week just about, you know, hitters that were impressing early on. You know, his season last year could be anything that you wanted it to be because he was a Gold Glove shortstop as a rookie. And he went 2020. He also-- like no matter how you slice it, he was a bad hitter. He had the second worst OPS-- or OBP among all qualified hitters. You know, the wRC+ was in the bottom 10.
What was extra weird, but I forgot was that he was amazing in August and then horrific in September. So like even his second half was completely uneven. He, you know, made some swing changes, some stance changes, it seems like. He looks great. I agree with you.
And it'll be interesting to see where he is in the lineup because that's the kind of player that I'm really curious to see if we keep him down in the bottom half or if he somehow makes his way up. Because it's going to be tough to crack the top of this lineup for any of these guys because of the veterans that they have at the top but he has looked great, and it's been very good to see. I agree.