Anthony Volpe: Champ or Chump for Fantasy Baseball?

Is Anthony Volpe a fantasy baseball sleeper, bust, or neither? Is he a flash in the pan or will he thrive? Rick Lucks's deep dive into Volpe's 2023 fantasy value.

Fantasy managers love when a top prospect breaks camp with the big league team, but it doesn't always work out the way we hope. For example, the fantasy community was thrilled when 22-year-old Anthony Volpe was named the Yankees shortstop for Opening Day. Through 250 PAs, he's hitting .186/.260/.345.

The bright side is his nine homers and 14 steals, giving him some fantasy juice even if his overall batting line is awful. Still, fantasy managers are losing patience and his roster rate has fallen to 59% on Yahoo! The growing pains are real.

That said, now is not the time to abandon the former first-round pick. Indeed, a deep dive into his numbers suggests upside that fantasy managers should find more than palatable the rest of the way.

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Why We Drafted Anthony Volpe

We should begin by reminding ourselves what made Volpe so interesting in fantasy to begin with. The shortstop reached the high minors for the first time just last season, slashing .251/.348/.472 with 18 HR and 44 SB in 497 PAs for Double-A (Somerset). He was only caught stealing six times, giving him an 88% success rate that should give him the green light even with an analytical club like the Yankees.

Volpe doesn't have the raw power of someone like Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton, but his 56.9 FB% means that even his 9.5% HR/FB figured to produce good power numbers at the highest level. Yankee Stadium is a great park for power hitters, fitting Volpe's quantity-over-quality approach to fly balls nicely.

Volpe also had a great approach at Double-A, posting solid surface-level stats (11.5 BB%, 17.7 K%) backed by a SwStr% of 9. His .272 BABIP was low as a result of his strong fly ball tendencies and a low 15.6 LD%, but everything else looked primed for big-league success.

The Yankees gave Volpe a brief taste of Triple-A (Scranton-Wilkes-Barre) at the end of the year and he hit .236/.313/.404 with three homers and six steals in 99 PAs. Most of the underlying stats held constant including a 52.5 FB%, 15.3 LD%, 9.7% HR/FB, and 9.1 SwStr%. The biggest differences were a .321 BABIP (likely a small sample fluke) and much worse plate discipline metrics (8.1 BB%, 30.3 K%).

We get about a full MLB season if we add the two seasons together, giving Volpe 21 HR and 50 SB. That plays in fantasy even if it comes with a low average.

The Category Juice of Anthony Volpe

Volpe might be struggling at the plate, but managers who selected him for HR and SB cannot be disappointed. Volpe's HR/FB has jumped to 15.8% as a Bronx Bomber, allowing him to make more of his 38.5 FB% than we would expect based on last year's MiLB numbers. He's currently pacing for around 20 homers, and that number increases if we assume that his FB% will rise above 40 as it did on the farm.

As expected, Volpe's contact quality has been roughly average. His 94.2 mph average airborne exit velocity ranks in the 51st percentile while his Max EV of 108.7 mph is in the 43rd. His 10% rate of Brls/BBE is above-average and provides the most optimism among his quality of contact indicators.

Similarly, Volpe is a perfect 14-for-14 on SB attempts as a Yankee, giving him every possible incentive to run. Considering his very strong success rates as a minor leaguer (he was only caught once at Triple-A) and his impressive 28.4 ft./sec Statcast Sprint Speed, the steals should keep on coming provided he can reach base.

Can Anthony Volpe Raise His Average?

While fantasy managers will take an average hit for category juice like Volpe's, we'd prefer not to. Fortunately, there are several indications that Volpe's batting average will improve moving forward, though it will remain Volpe's bugaboo in all probability.

First, Volpe has simply been unlucky thus far. His xBA of .218 isn't good, but it is 32 points higher than his actual average of .186. Furthermore, Volpe is fast enough that he'll probably leg out a few hits that xBA doesn't expect. While the stat is supposed to consider a batter's speed, this author finds that it consistently underestimates it.

Volpe projects as a low-BABIP guy since he doesn't hit many line drives and produces a ton of airborne contact, but his current mark of .234 still feels way too low. This is likely connected to his xBA being higher than his batting average but is still worth pointing out.

xBA assumes that a player deserves his current K% as well, but Volpe should be better than his 30.8 K%. His 12.8 SwStr% isn't that bad, and swing-and-miss wasn't a significant issue on the farm. Volpe's 31.6% chase rate is slightly better than average, so he's not flailing helplessly in the batter's box either. Finally, Volpe's 8.8 BB% suggests he knows how to work a count.

Volpe has a patient approach that will always produce more strikeouts than we expect, but his K% should probably be in the mid to upper 20s instead of 30+. As such, his average stands to benefit from positive regression.

The Verdict on Anthony Volpe

Nobody wants to see a .186 average on their fantasy team, but Volpe is on pace for a 20/30 season regardless. All of the major public projection systems think Volpe will improve ROS too:

System     Line                      HR     SB     PAs

ZiPS        .223/.305/.392    11        15      348

Steamer  .224/.304/.388   8         12     271

THEBATX  .246/.313/.431  12      13     333

ATC            .235/.310/.395    8       12     287

Adding any of these projections to Volpe's current line brings his season average over .200 and gives him a 20/20 campaign assuming full-time PAs. While his recent slump has him buried in the 9 spot, the Yankees have also hit him leadoff 20 times this season, suggesting that upward mobility in the lineup is possible.

Given Volpe's young age and sterling prospect pedigree, Volpe offers upside beyond what projection systems spit out as well. While you may want to bench him during this slump, it says here that Volpe will be a Champ for fantasy managers by season's end.

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