Anthony Volpe’s last 11 games have been some of the worst in Yankees history. But who is his company?
The Yankees left the Bronx with a sweep of the Washington Nationals following an 11-2 drubbing. Trent Grisham sent a leadoff bomb to the seats, setting the tone, and the bottom half of the third inning was a power show, with the Yankees putting up a nine-spot, including home runs from Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Ryan McMahon, and Ben Rice. Jasson Domínguez threw in a ground-rule double, for good measure.
Austin Wells joined in later, sending a ball over the outfield wall in the bottom of the fourth inning, putting the Yankees up 11-0 and giving them six homers on the day. However, there was one player who still managed to draw attention due to his conspicuous absence from all the fun: Anthony Volpe.
Volpe’s struggles with the bat since joining the major league ranks haven’t been an undocumented issue, and he certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed this year. He’s been one of the most criticized Yankees this season, and after he went 0-for-5 against the Nationals’ pitching staff, including a wave and a miss strikeout in his fifth at-bat, he drew some boos from the Yankee faithful.
One wRC+ point away from tying his career low in that specific category, Volpe has been on one of the worst stretches not just in his career, but in Yankee history:
Volpe is on a 1-for-37 run right now, with zero walks. How does that stack up with the other terrible streaks in the team’s history?
Starting with the earliest slump, Luke Boone went 1-for-37 in 1916, his third of four seasons played in the major leagues. He’d appear in only one more season after 1916, playing 27 games for Pittsburgh and hitting .198. Mike Garbark went 1-for-38 in 1945, which was his second and last season in the bigs. Both players had short careers played during World Wars (though the United States was not yet in the conflict for Boone’s). Even beyond the mere fact that baseball was a different game back then, they are still separate than Volpe’s current situation, as a former top prospect who’s been an everyday starter for nearly three seasons.
Jim Wynn, in 1977, was in the final year of a long, distinguished 15-year major league career, and at age 35, he didn’t play like a former All-Star and MVP-caliber player. The man once known as “the Toy Cannon” in Houston split time in ‘77 with the Yankees and the Milwaukee Brewers, playing only 30 games with the Bombers before earning a release with a slash line of .143/.283/.234 for an OPS of .516 and an OPS+ of 44.
So, to this point, the worst 11-game streaks in Yankees history have been held by two players who never again played for the Yankees, and a player who was previously an All-Star but would retire after the season.
Those seasons, though, are not as intriguing a story as the two seasons from Jason Giambi in 2003 and 2004. In back-to-back seasons, he had one of the worst 11-game stretches in the team’s history, and in one of those seasons, Giambi actually hit the ball well.
In 2003, Giambi finished 13th in the MVP voting and was an All-Star. His .939 OPS was the highest on a team that won 101 games that season and the American League East. He also hit 41 home runs, the highest total for the Yankees that season. His streak in 2003 occurred around the same time as the current Volpe streak — at the end of August, leading into September. The Yankees were 6-7 across those 13 games, but recovered with six straight wins and eight wins in their next 10 games.
Giambi’s 2004 form was much less adequate. He finished with a .720 OPS, and his .208 batting average was one of the worst of his career, the 11-game streak that saw him go 1-for-37 not helping his case.
At 33-years-old, Giambi would still play for another decade before deciding to hang up the cleats. The 2004 season, when viewed in relation to the rest of his career, including his 2005 season with the Yankees, during which he had a fantastic AL Comeback Player of the Year campaign, was a bit of an anomaly; Giambi had been diagnosed with a benign tumor that summer and had suffered injuries to his back and hips.
So, where does that leave Volpe?
It’s safe to say that, had Giambi not posted this kind of streak in 2003, there would be room for Yankees fans to say this is the worst 11-game streak in modern Yankees history, if not all of Yankee history. Most of the players in the club’s history that have had stretches this bad have not bounced back, Giambi’s 2003 a lone exception. Volpe’s abilities as a defender at a premium position and as a baserunner should at least give him a way to contribute even he’s not hitting, but this season, he’s regressed in those areas as well. This isn’t breaking news, but the picture isn’t pretty right now. We’ll have to wait and see if Aaron Boone and the Yankees give Volpe even more time to try and snap out of this horrendous funk.
Category: General Sports
