ESPN analyst issues wake-up call for Yankees star: ‘You have control’

Yankees infielder Anthony Volpe made headlines recently when he suggested that things were largely out of his hands.

On “The Michael Kay Show” on Thursday, ESPN’s Buster Olney wasn’t buying it.

“I get what he’s getting at, where your feeling is, ‘Hey, the decision is not mine,” Olney said in a clip shared on YouTube. “But I read it and I thought, ‘No, that’s not right. You have control.’”

The core of Olney’s argument is that Volpe has spent his time in the big leagues insisting on being a shortstop.

He was drafted as one, developed as one and started at the position for a Yankees team that went on to compete in the World Series.

But the game has moved on, and Olney argues that Volpe needs to move with it.

“If you’re Anthony Volpe in this moment, do a similar thing — don’t insist on just being a shortstop. Go play around the diamond. Do different things,” Olney said, drawing a direct comparison to Jose Caballero, who built a career out of positional versatility and ultimately took Volpe’s job by doing exactly that.

Olney went further, citing research he did ahead of the conversation. He reached out to team evaluators who unanimously agreed that Volpe would benefit from expanding his positional versatility.

He also spoke with MLB stat guru Sarah Langs about Volpe’s arm strength, which ranks in the bottom third among shortstops — a detail that speaks to the very real possibility that Volpe’s long-term defensive home isn’t at short at all.

For Friday night’s series opener between the Yankees and the Mets, the over/under is currently set at 7 total runs on DraftKings. Our in-depth