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Anthony Volpe, SS
Current 2019 Draft Ranking: 33
Volpe has long been a mainstay at the highest profile amateur baseball
venues, playing for Team USA in Taiwan at 12-years-old and participating in
several dozen showcase and tournament events in high school, including last
year’s Perfect Game and Under Armour All-American games at Petco Park and
Wrigley Field, respectively. His experience is evident on the field – Volpe
shows plus feel to play on both sides of the ball, which helps to elevate his
game above his collection of relatively average tools.
A right-handed hitting shortstop, Volpe is short and muscular, with
especially strong legs and a lively look to his frame. He’s a good athlete
who moves around the dirt well, showing average range and an average arm with
instincts that might enable him to play slightly above those. He has good
hands and takes very good angles to balls, seemingly never fielding an
in-between hop and doing a good job getting around and fielding the ball. I
think he has a chance to be average at shortstop and could provide good
utility value moving around the dirt to both second base and third base
long-term.
Offensively, Volpe hits from a spread stance with high hands, even with the
pitcher. He’s compact to the ball and is an aggressive hitter who showed a
pretty good approach at the plate, looking to drive the ball to the gaps. He
is a 55 runner who runs hard and takes good angles around the bases. His
swing – compact and consistent — showcases both fringy quickness and bat
speed. He really pinches his hands in and artificially gets his bat on plane
(think J.D. Martinez from gather to contact, and not Alex Bregman). This isn’
t necessarily an issue, but Volpe has 40-grade raw power and is already
relatively mature physically.
This type of swing path – one that pulls the hands in and then drives the
barrel downward into the hitting plane and pushes it through with the hands
– typically leads to an opposite field-heavy approach. Someone like the
aforementioned Martinez, who artificially gets on plane, overcomes suboptimal
contact points because he’s so strong. In 2017 and 2018, Martinez’s average
exit velocity and launch angle to right field were 92.6 mph and 25.3 degrees,
respectively, and he hit 54.6% of batted balls to right field at above 95
mph. It’s extremely difficult to imagine Volpe impacting the ball that much
and with that much regularity long term.
Volpe showed his feel to hit and his opposite field approach on Saturday by
driving a line drive to right center field for a home run, although the right
center field fence was just 330 feet away so this ball would have likely been
a double or a triple on most fields. My concern is not with his ability to
make contact or his ability to hit the ball to right field; it’s with his
ability to drive the ball with power and pull the ball consistently. I can
see an average hit tool long-term due to the feel to hit and pitch
recognition skills, but the lack of power and the artificial nature with
which his barrel gets to the zone concern me with respect to his ability to
drive the ball consistently.
Of course, none of the above concerns mean that a swing like Volpe’s isn’t
fixable. He’s been lauded in the industry for his baseball IQ and showed
nothing on Saturday to make me reach a different conclusion, so there is the
possibility that he can make adjustments to his swing and drive the ball more
consistently. And regardless, this is a well-rounded high school infielder
with a high baseball IQ, a chance to stay at shortstop, and average hit tool
potential. That’s an intriguing profile, and one that doesn’t last beyond
the first few rounds of the draft, as there is bat-to-ball and utility value
in the profile. His lack of a plus tool and the uncertainty about his ability
to hit for better than 40-grade power push him into more second or third
round contention for me, but I could see a team who values versatility and
strong contact skills taking him a little higher than that and letting their
minor league hitting coaches get to work.
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