I started this blog seven years ago and, although I have no way to verify this, nothing I wrote or posted generated more vitriol than when I’d simply point out that Didi Gregorius was a garbage hitter.
Put a pin in that, we’ll come back to it.
The extent to which Anthony Volpe is miscast as a leadoff hitter is either funny or mind boggling depending on one’s mood. I’ve always been a big fan of Aaron Boone, so I think there’s a people managing thing going on that is superseding logic, but regardless…
Over the course of Volpe’s career, covering 972 PA and more than a year and a half of baseball, there have been 118 batters with enough PA to qualify for rate statistics. Among those 118 batters…
Only six have been easier to get out than Anthony Volpe.
If you’re thinking “but he’s improved”, you’re right – sort of.
Over his last 305 PA, covering more than 80% of the 2024 season, among the 155 qualified MLB hitters, Volpe ranks 125th in OBP.
(For the record, that’s just OBP. In wRC+, Volpe is 121st out of 155 in the latter group, 105th out of 118 in the former group.)
I’m not breaking new ground here. The job of a leadoff hitter is to get on base and Anthony Volpe is bad at getting on base. The fact that he’s been the Yankees leadoff hitter for 70 consecutive games is flat out bizarre.
If you want to come at me for dismissing the two-week hot streak he opened 2024 with, have at it because that tiny sample is looking more and more like an aberration every day. I’ll stick with the two significantly larger sample sizes – one of which includes that little hot streak – above.
Volpe is less qualified and more miscast for his spot in the batting order than any Yankee since…
Didi Gregorius.
Didi spent a very long period of time being a below average hitter. Then he went a 98-game stretch from the middle of 2017 through April of 2018 in which he hit like Roger Maris. Then he immediately reverted to being a bad hitter again for the rest of his career.
In fact, from May of 2018 through the end of 2019 – a span that covered 804 PA – Didi had the lowest wRC+, the lowest SLG and lowest OBP of any of the nine Yankees’ regulars over the same stretch.
But that didn’t stop the Yanks from batting him 3rd or 4th in the lineup more than half of the time (literally) in the second half of 2019 – LONG after he’d shown that his hot streak a year prior was an aberration.
It was mind numbing at the time, just as watching Anthony Volpe specialize in “not” getting on base night after night for a season and a half but still get the regular leadoff gig is mind numbing now.
Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.
PS: My last post where I mentioned that “The Numbers Game” by Alan Schwarz is the best book on baseball statistics I’ve ever read generated some good recommendations from readers for me – but I’ll stick with my declaration above.
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