Minutes after Aaron Boone declared that he didn’t believe Anthony Volpe’s shoulder injury impacted his underwhelming season, Brian Cashman took the podium and suggested the alternative.
Asked the same question as his manager, the Yankees GM opined that Volpe’s injury - which later required offseason surgery - could have played a part in his rough 2025 campaign, especially after the surgery was completed.
“I personally think now, I start leaning more into that yes, it was affecting him,” Cashman admitted during Thursday’s press conference. “Ultimately, he had to have surgery. None of that was on the table in season, so I think all things can be true.
“Was it bothering him to a level that was getting to a height of concern for us in season? The answer is no. Why? The player said it wasn’t bothering him at that point. The physical testing was coming back strong. We did an MRI showed some old stuff in there, and [Doctor] Ahmad recommended we do a shot...that seemed to take care of that. But the struggles keep happening.”
Cashman noted that the surgery revealed that Volpe’s injury was likely more severe than the two in-season MRIs suggested, but whether that was due to further wear and tear or Volpe himself insisting he was fine when he wasn’t, he was sure the Yankees did all they good to gauge if their homegrown shortstop was feeling 100 percent.
“I know when follow-up asks, including from my chair, ‘Is this a problem?’ I’ll deal with our head trainer and his staff, the player - ‘No, I’ve actually felt better than I have the entire season.’ this was during performance lapses,” Cashman explained. “I know some people suggest that we underplayed the injury. I don’t think that’s true. I think we were trying to be as honest with our fans and the media...the shot hit, he really responded well, you forget about it.
But suddenly the performance is shoddy...now he’s getting another shot.
“As the year goes on and he’s diving all over the place, kind of irritating it maybe at times, it starts to move up the tree of that it wasn’t a concern, maybe it’s a concern...it’s all speculative.”
Cashman wasn’t sure if Boone had been able to talk to the surgeon or what he saw when he was repairing Volpe’s torn labrum, but for him personally, he believes the injury likely impacted Volpe more than he or the Yankees thought during the season after he initially hurt the shoulder in May.
“After the surgery...the cleanup was more severe than the MRI result,” Cashman said. “So that leads me to, do I think it was probably more of an impact? Probably. But speculative.”