For the second consecutive October, Anthony Volpe is rising to the occasion.
Volpe stood out on offense and defense during the three games in the Wild Card round, helping the Yankees eliminate the Boston Red Sox and advance to the ALDS.
By going 4-for-11 in the series, Volpe boosted his postseason average to .300 in 17 career playoff games.
So what allows him to elevate his play on the biggest stage?
“These are important, meaningful games,” Volpe told the Daily News after the Yankees’ 4-0 win in Game 3. “But I think it’s everyone. It’s so infectious. Everyone’s so locked in, so dialed in, that I think everyone just feeds off each other.”
Volpe’s four hits in the Wild Card series tied him with Aaron Judge for the team lead, and he had at least one hit in all three games.
His solo home run against Garrett Crochet accounted for the Yankees’ only offense in their Game 1 loss, while his RBI single in Thursday night’s Game 3 win came in the middle of a four-run rally against Red Sox rookie Connelly Early.
This follows a 2024 postseason in which Volpe batted .286 with a homer, six RBI and five stolen bases during the Yankees’ run to the World Series.
“It’s everything we work for, from the last out of last season,” said Volpe, a New York native who grew up a Yankees fan. “This has been our goal and we just want to take advantage of all the opportunities.”
It also follows an uneven 2025 regular season for Volpe, who hit .212 with 19 home runs and set career highs with 72 RBI but with 19 errors as well.
Volpe played through a partial labrum tear in his left shoulder, which the Yankees believe was an old injury that he aggravated on a diving attempt on defense in early May.
The 24-year-old received a cortisone shot on Sept. 10, his second of the season. Upon returning, Volpe ended the season on a hot streak — he hit .289 over the final 12 games — that he has carried into the playoffs.
“He is a gamer. He is a tough kid,” manager Aaron Boone said before Game 3. “You asked me all season long how he handled [things]. He is a guy that handles failure and success really well up here. He is super competitive, too, and likes the action.”
In both of the Yankees’ wins over the Red Sox, Volpe delivered an important defensive play.
In the eighth inning of the Yankees’ 4-3 win in Game 2, Volpe caught a high throw from Devin Williams on a comebacker, tapped second base and threw to first for a double play. That helped preserve what was then a tied ball game.
And in the sixth inning of their Game 3 victory, Volpe gloved a low throw from second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. for a sixth-inning force out. The Yankees were leading 4-0 at the time, but had Volpe been unable to come up with Chisholm’s one-hopper, the Red Sox would have had two runners on base with nobody out.
“The final couple weeks of the season, he started to swing the bat well, and obviously has carried that into the first couple of games here in the playoffs,” Boone said.
“It has been six to eight weeks, too, of the defense being up to Anthony’s standards again, where he is playing really well and fast on defense. … He had that stretch in June or July, that four-week stretch where he was scuffling out there. It’s been a couple months of really good now.”
Next up for the Yankees is an ALDS meeting with another division rival in the top-seeded Blue Jays, which begins Saturday afternoon in Toronto.
While the Blue Jays have not played since Sunday due to their first-round bye, the Yankees enter that series with momentum after their hard-fought battle with Boston.
“It was a grind,” Volpe said. “It was a tough series to be a part of, but we’ve got a mission, we’ve got a goal, and we’re just getting going now. The job’s not done by any means.”
