The Yankees have been sputtering due to the fact Aaron Decide went down with a toe injury early this thirty day period. A single player helping to continue to keep items from heading totally off the rails is rookie shortstop Anthony Volpe—and he’s executing so with a small help from an Italian-American vintage.
Volpe, MLB.com’s No. 5 prospect in baseball before this year, has struggled at the plate midway by his very first period in the majors, publishing an underwhelming .203/.282/.368 slash line. But he’s turned matters all around of late, many thanks in portion to a realization he had all through a get-jointly with some previous teammates.
According to a June 14 story in the New York Each day Information by Gary Phillips, Volpe invited some of his 2022 small league teammates more than to his household in New Jersey on the Yankees’ June 12 off working day. The players “hung out, dined on chicken parm and reminisced whilst likely around previous at-bats,” Phillips wrote.
Anthony Volpe in 12 game titles given that Austin Wells informed him to regulate his batting stance above rooster parm evening meal:
11-for-35 (.314), HR, 4 2B, 6 BB, .929 OPS pic.twitter.com/RT3eP2j7pn
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) June 28, 2023
It was for the duration of that party that Volpe and catching prospect Austin Wells (No. 4 on MLB.com’s preseason Yankees list) realized one thing about Volpe’s batting stance.
“Kind of a minor stuff with my stance and how I set up to hit,” Volpe reported. “It was so modest, but we each type of observed it and started speaking about it. I think we both took a ton away from it.”
In his first activity following the rooster parm social gathering, working with his retooled stance, Volpe went 2-for-4 with two doubles. In the 12 game titles due to the fact generating the adjustment, his slash line is a substantially enhanced .314/.415/.514. That’s 146 place advancement in his OPS compared to his first 67 online games. In Tuesday night’s disappointing 2–1 loss to the A’s, Volpe was the lone vivid place for the Yankees, heading 3-for-4 from the eighth place in the batting order.
That ought to have been some great rooster parm.