As Anthony Volpe gets set for his encore after an Opening Day where his spotlight rivaled, and likely exceeded, Aaron Judge’s first game as captain and as a $360 million Yankee for life, Craig and Evan worry that the hype around the 21-year-old has already gone too far.
“This poor kid, man,” Craig said. “Obviously a highly-anticipated, homegrown Yankee, blah, blah, blah, but we’re setting this poor kid up, man. They are gonna turn on him so fast if it doesn’t go well.
“I get you want to see him do well. A local kid, the story is awesome. I know the fans are excited. But the media, give this kid some room to breathe!”
Volpe has been the main Yankees storyline since he dazzled in spring training and won the starting shortstop competition, not to mention the Derek Jeter parallels of being a local kid who grew up loving the team, won over coaches with his work ethic, and now takes on the starting shortstop role as an unproven rookie.
But those parallels may be setting an astronomically high bar for Volpe, who himself has tried to fend off the Jeter comparisons.
“That’s my problem here,” Evan said. “Everything is ‘Jeter, Jeter, Jeter.’ Jeter is, in my opinion, the greatest shortstop of our generation, in terms of a guy that played shortstop his whole career, there’s nobody better. I’d take him over Cal Ripken…and that’s who you’re comparing him to. And that sucks, because the odds of being even 80 percent of Derek Jeter is very limited. He’s a Hall of Famer!
“If Anthony Volpe turns into Dansby Swanson, is that good enough? That’s a good baseball player, but he’s only been to one All-Star Game. Is that good enough?”
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