The first rumblings about Anthony Volpe, the next great hope of the New York Yankees, were silences that spoke loudly. When a raft of high-profile shortstops hit the market ahead of 2022 — Corey Seager, Carlos Correa and Marcus Semien among them — the Yankees turned away despite coming to the public realization that Gleyber Torres was not a long-term fit for the position. When another wave of shortstops became available this winter, the Yankees once again sat out the chase.
The noise, absent from the Bronx, was instead building in the New York exurbs. First around the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades in 2021, then around the Double-A Somerset Patriots in 2022. Around a confident, poised, first-round pick who had the “it factor,” even according to GM Brian Cashman.
Of all people, Volpe was certainly aware that the din wouldn’t be dying down, not here, not for him. He grew up in New Jersey and on the Upper East Side of Manhattan during the Derek Jeter years. He chose his hometown Yankees over joining high school teammate Jack Leiter at Vanderbilt.
By the time Volpe emerged from the Somerset dugout for the start of the 2022 season, he was one of the most highly regarded prospects in baseball, and the eyes of all Yankees fans were wandering to him, to his box scores, to his scouting reports. With him playing so close to home that he lived with his parents, throngs of people Volpe knew — or who knew him — packed the park every night. Many of them whispered his name in the same sentence as Jeter’s.
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sports.yahoo.com]
