The Yankees have one of the more fascinating position battles going on around the majors right now at the shortstop position.
It appears one of the youngsters competing for the role has the inside track.
New York has three players vying for the starting shortstop role: Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe. Kiner-Falefa is a sound defensive player who handled most of the work at short last season, but Peraza and Volpe are widely regarded as the organization’s future in the middle infield.
Peraza has 21 games of big league experience (including three games in the postseason last year), and it sounds like many more opportunities are on the way for him beginning later this month.
“Spending two days with the Yankees over the weekend on Friday and Saturday," ESPN"s Buster Olney said on the "Baseball Tonight" podcast, "I walked away basically having heard that Peraza is going to be the shortstop – unless something completely unforeseen happens – with IKF potentially being on the bench at the start of the year. Maybe some team steps up and makes a trade for (Kiner-Falefa), and Volpe probably will start in the minor leagues.”
Volpe has looked really good with the bat so far in camp, but he has no MLB experience and has played just 22 Triple-A games. Rushing him to the majors when there are two other viable options would be risky asset management.
It’s still possible the Yankees trade Kiner-Falefa and go all-in on the kids. That has some inherent risk of its own, but, clearly, the organization is bullish about what Peraza could give them now.
Peraza hit .306 across 49 at-bats in his 18 regular season games with New York last season, with one homer, two RBIs, nine strikeouts and a .833 OPS. He’s on track to become a better defensive player than Volpe, which could ultimately move Volpe to second base long term.
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram