Why Yankees' Anthony Volpe isn't 'trying' to pull the ball

Gary Phillips, New York Daily News on Jul 21, 2025

Published in Baseball

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TORONTO — With 2 1/2 seasons of big league baseball under his belt, Anthony Volpe remains an enigma at the plate.

Now 24, Volpe has seemingly gone back and forth between trying to be a speedy singles-slapping hitter and a slugger willing to sacrifice strikeouts for home runs. The results have been wildly inconsistent, with short-lived peaks and prolonged valleys contributing to a career 86 wRC+ entering the New York Yankees’ game against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday.

Volpe, a right-handed hitter with a 90 wRC+ this season, pulled the ball repeatedly over three games in Atlanta over the weekend. On Friday, he drove a pitch to deep left-center, but the Braves’ Michael Harris II made a pretty running catch. Saturday saw Volpe record the first multi-homer game of his career after depositing two balls in the left field seats at Truist Park. He also had a long sac fly to the left side of center field. On Sunday, Volpe singled to left and hit a few groundouts to his pull side.

With Volpe fresh off the All-Star break and a previous 35-game stretch that saw him post a .494 OPS dating back to June 7 — the day after Boston’s Walker Buehler hit him in the elbow with a pitch — it was reasonable to wonder if he had decided he wanted to start pulling the ball more over the break.

“No, not necessarily,” Volpe replied after his power surge on Saturday.

In a follow-up with the New York Daily News, Volpe explained why.

“When I’ve [pulled the ball] and been successful, I’ve never been trying to do it necessarily,” he said. “I feel like you put yourself in good position, and that just unfolds and happens naturally. So just focus on stuff I can do. Obviously, that’s the result you want.”

Volpe then added, “When I try to do that, you guys ask me why I don’t go opposite field and stuff like that.”

Volpe has been the subject of much debate, with fans, pundits and reporters often wondering which aforementioned version of himself he should commit to.

It was just last week that Alex Rodriguez ironically declared that he prefers the singles version of the shortstop.

“With his great legs, my job would be, ‘I don’t want to hit home runs. I want to hit low line drives, hit ground-balls all over the place, force the defense to make errors, become an incredible bunter,’” the once-prolific home run hitter told "The Michael Kay Show." “I’d like to have 8-12 bunt hits, because a bunt base-hit for Volpe is like a double. It’s OPS, right?”

Speaking of OPS, Volpe entered Monday with a career mark of .705 on balls with a launch angle less than 15 degrees. He had an OPS of 1.003 on balls with a launch angle greater than 15 degrees.

Volpe’s xwOBA, which measures quality of contact, was .324 with a launch angle under 15 degrees. It was .416 with a launch angle greater than 15 degrees.

Still, A-Rod wants Volpe to ditch his uppercut swing, utilize his speed more, improve his contact rates and put more stress on opposing defenses. There are plenty of fans who agree, and then there are plenty who’d prefer Volpe pursue slug because they can see that he simply doesn’t possess the bat-to-ball skills of someone like Luis Arraez.

Volpe, however, doesn’t think chasing power is the answer, nor is he looking to be a singles hitter. Rather, he believes that pop, especially to his pull side, will come with good positioning and timing.

“That’s the objective, and that’s what we’re all trying to do,” Volpe said. “Everyone’s different in how they get to that spot.”

Finding that consistently, of course, is another story, which Volpe knows all too well.

Now in his third season, he has received unwavering support from the Yankees organization, including Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman. But with his defense and baserunning regressing this season and his bat still below average, he finished the first half as a target for impatient onlookers.

Volpe is aware of the criticism, though he’s tried to not let it impact his confidence.

“I go through the team, so when we win, I’m happy,” he said. “When we lose, I’m not. So anything other than that, I know what I gotta do. I have high standards for myself, and any of the stuff on the outside doesn’t even come close to the standard I hold myself to.”

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