​Michael Kay’s comments about Anthony Volpe added fuel to the Yankees’ mounting questions about the young shortstop, and now Kay says he’s taken them back. Once seen by many as the heir to Derek Jeter, Volpe has yet to prove he’s the long-term answer at short for the Yankees. Still, the club continues to give him every chance to lock down the job, perhaps partly because he’s reluctant to consider relocating to another position.
During Tuesday’s afternoon edition of The Michael Kay Show on ESPN New York, Kay, the familiar TV voice of the Yankees, said he’d heard that Volpe was resistant to switching positions if the team asked him to move to second base. “He has not played great at shortstop,” Kay conceded. “And the one thing he’s done, and I’m not sure that it’s done, but there have been enough people that have told me that it was done, that when he was in the minor leagues, the Yankees said, ‘Maybe you should play some second base,’ and he said, ‘No, I’m a shortstop.’ That’s not a good look if it happened.”
After earning a Gold Glove in his rookie year in 2023, Volpe’s defense regressed, and he even led the American League in errors last season. He returned to the minors this season while recuperating from shoulder surgery, and it seemed around that time that the Yankees might have sought to discuss a positional switch with him.
The assertion that Volpe wouldn’t even entertain moving to second base sparked a firestorm, with the shortstop already carrying some built-in scrutiny and Yankees fans ready to look for a reason to ship him out. If Kay was hearing from “enough people” that Volpe wouldn’t consider a switch, those people would presumably be well-placed to know what was being discussed within the organization. Still, the claim left the impression that the Yankees perhaps needed to prod Volpe toward flexibility to sustain his future with the club.
By Wednesday, though, Kay walked back his remarks, saying there was “absolutely not truth” to the rumor that Volpe wouldn’t play second base. In a post to social media, Kay stated, “I spoke of a rumor yesterday on TMKS that Anthony Volpe would not play 2B in the minors. Sounded unlike him, so I checked further today, and there is absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. He never refused to work at second.”
It’s difficult to imagine Kay making such a correction without at least some level of vetting, given the sensitivity of Volpe’s standing with the fan base and the stakes for his development. Yet in the wake of the retraction, questions linger about the source of the initial report. Who were the “enough people” Kay cited? It’s reasonable to assume he was referring to individuals with close ties to the Yankees, given his role in the organization’s orbit. If so, either Kay received questionable information that he trusted enough to share publicly, or someone inside the team’s circle is attempting to tamp down the Volpe narrative after stoking it.
The episode underscores the fragility of rumors in a sport where a single narrative can shape public perception and influence player development conversations. Volpe remains at the center of a delicate balance: a promising prospect whose ceiling excites the fan base, yet whose early performance has invited intense scrutiny. The Yankees, for their part, have continued to give him opportunities at short and have historically valued his skill set and upside.
In the aftermath, the focus shifts back to Volpe’s performance on the field and his willingness to be adaptable off it. If he’s reluctant to switch positions in the future, the team may need to address whether that resistance is a personal preference, a strategic decision, or a temporary stance tied to his confidence and comfort level at short. Either way, the situation highlights how quickly rumors can flare into headlines and how quickly a correction can follow, especially when the subject is a player whose path to stardom is still being charted.