Willie Randolph likes what he sees with Yankees' Anthony Volpe
Anthony Volpe of the Yankees follows through on his sixth-inning RBI single against the Astros at Yankee Stadium on Thursday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Imagine you’re Anthony Volpe. You’re playing shortstop as a 22-year-old rookie for the Yankees, the team you grew up worshipping, and a prolonged slump has your batting average all the way down to .186 on June 11. Fans and media are calling for you to be sent to the minors for your own good, and to be honest, it might not be the worst idea.
How do you not let that crush you? How do you persevere and get to August, when you had three hits on Wednesday and the go-ahead RBI single on Thursday, when your average is up to .215 and you have played in every single game and if it were up to you, you’d play in all 162?
Willie Randolph, a mentor of Volpe from spring training, thinks he has the answer.
“What I see from a distance, I think he’s tough mentally. And that’s the key,” Randolph, the former Yankees second baseman and coach and former Mets manager, told Newsday outside the visiting dugout before the Yankees’ 7-3 loss to the Astros on Friday night.
“What I see is just learning how to play the game. It’s hard. Adjustments are crucial, especially when you’re young. It’s not easy to do. I did it, but it was a little bit different game. But I think this is actually good for him in a lot of ways. These ups and downs are going to be good for him. Looking at the end of the year, if he finishes up strong, then we really know that this experience has been good.”
Randolph, 69, knows firsthand of what he speaks. As a 21-year-old rookie out of Brooklyn for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1975, he hit .164 in 30 games.
Still, the Yankees saw enough to trade for him before the 1976 season. Randolph was an All-Star in his first two years in the Bronx and has two World Series rings in his trophy case.
Is Volpe an All-Star? No, not by a long shot. The Yankees threw him in the deep end by naming him their Opening Day shortstop, and he bobbed his head as if he were going under a few times, but he seems to be ascending at just the right time with a smile that just can’t be knocked off his face.
“That’s what I love about him — his focus,” Randolph said. “Because he wants to be the best. And you can tell just by the body language of a young player, and with the questions they ask you, how they work. He’s going to work. They all work. But to me, it’s here.”
Randolph pointed to his head with that last part, and again when he said of the time he spent with Volpe in spring training, “I work more here with them. ‘How do you approach the game? What do you think? How would you do this? How would you react to that?’ So when we talk baseball, we talk more about the cerebral part of the game.”
Randolph made it clear that he was not taking credit for Volpe’s development. He understands he’s not part of the Yankees’ coaching staff. But he takes his role as a spring training instructor very seriously and isn’t, as he put it, there to “shake hands and kiss babies.”
Randolph said he was at Yankee Stadium to visit with Astros manager Dusty Baker and Astros executive Reggie Jackson (yes, Mr. October was in town, too, but kept a low profile). By chance, Randolph’s old glory days double-play partner, Bucky Dent, threw out the first pitch on his bobblehead night.
It was not a good night for the Yankees, as Luis Severino allowed five runs in four innings-plus in what has to be his final start of 2023 (right, Aaron Boone?). Severino’s ERA stands at 7.74; the Yankees simply can’t afford to give any more games away by starting the righthander. But that was true a month ago.
Volpe went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. His average dropped to .213. Growing pains.
As it stands now, this season is going to end without a postseason berth. It may just have to go down in Yankees history as the season Anthony Volpe learned how to be a major-leaguer, with the best yet to come.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
