The second Derek Jeter?
The New York Yankees have unusually included 21-year-old rookie Anthony Volpi in their 2023 Opening Day roster. MLB Network analyzed that it was reminiscent of 20-year-old Derek Jeter in 1995.
They share quite a lot in common, such as being the same age at 21, playing shortstop, being selected in the first round of the draft, and being from New Jersey. The difference is in height, Jeter is a shortstop and is 190cm, belonging to the large class. Volpi is 180cm.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone called Volfi to Tampa’s George M. Steinbrenner Field on the 27th and said, “The club watched his performance in 132 minor league games last year and his performance in spring training this year. So we decided to put you in the big leagues.” It was a place where the coach personally celebrated entering the 26-man roster for the opening game.
Volfi, the 30th overall pick in the 2019 draft, is not a player on the MLB 40-man roster. The club joined the camp as an invited player (non-Roston Invitational) in this spring training. Time was only a matter of time, he was considered a promising prospect to become a major leaguer.
He participated in 18 Grapefruit League games, including the match against the Tampa Bay Rays on the 28th, with a batting average of 0.311, 3 homers, 5 RBIs and 11 runs scored. The club once again encouraged Volpi before the match by winning the 2023 James P. Dawson Award. The ‘James P. Dawson Award’ is an award that the Yankees give to the rookie who shows the most outstanding performance in spring training every year.
This award honors James P. Dawson, who started as a servant in 1908 and worked for the New York Times for 45 years as a boxing and baseball reporter and editor. He died during spring training in 1953, and the Yankees established an award for him. People who made the Yankees shine, such as Willie Randolph in 1976, Don Mattingly in 1983, and Hideki Matsui in 2003, won the award.
Tony Kubek in 1957 and Tom Tresh in 1962 won the Dawson Award and the American League Rookie of the Year this year.
Volpi competed against Venezuelan-born rookie Oswald Peraza in spring training. The Yankees’ starting shortstop last season was Isaiah Cainer-Faleppa. The problem is the attack. In 142 games last year, Cainer-Faleppa hit just four homers.
The Yankees haven’t fixed a shortstop in the past four years. The face has changed to Didi Gregorious in 2019, current second baseman Glaber Torres in 2020 and 2021, and Cainer-Palepa in 2022. This is why, over the past two years, whenever top-notch shortstops have appeared in the offseason free agent market, Yankees have been mentioned. But the Yankees didn’t jump into the free agent market.
It is unclear whether Volpi will play as the starting shortstop for the SF Giants opening game at Yankee Stadium on the 31st. The opening game with 40,000 spectators is a huge psychological burden. In the case of Jeter, he debuted against the Seattle Mariners on May 29, 1995, played 15 games, and went back to the minor leagues. When he became full-timer in 1996, he won the AL Rookie of the Year award and proved himself to be a cotyledon by hitting hard on the World Series stage.메이저놀이터 After that, he became a legend who served as the Yankees captain and entered the Hall of Fame.
Whether the Yankees can turn Volfi into a second Jeter, he holds the key.