Former MLB team president explains Yankees’ Anthony Volpe misfire: ‘It (never) occurred to us’

It was a routine, logistical, completely unremarkable decision.

Yankees infielder Anthony Volpe’s rehab assignment was moved from AAA to AA — not because he was struggling, not because he was being demoted in any meaningful sense, but because of travel scheduling. That’s it.

Except nobody explained that. And in the social media era, the absence of an explanation is an open invitation for the worst possible interpretation.

That gap between front-office thinking and public perception is exactly what David Samson and David Coca broke down in a recent episode of “Nothing Personal.”

Coca was direct about where the Yankees went wrong.

“Speaking on the Volpe situation, teams need to be more cognizant of sending out information like that with an explainer,” Coca said in a YouTube video. “Because now... he is getting piled on with more and more social media hate because the Yankees organization felt the need to say that he was being sent to AA without just saying, ‘Hey, he’s not traveling with the team.’”

So why didn’t the Yankees just explain it? Former Marlins president David Samson’s answer is honest in a way that might frustrate fans, but it perfectly captures how front offices think.

“Why wouldn’t we communicate that? Because it wouldn’t have occurred to us to care enough to communicate it, but it is made public only not by us,” Samson said.

There it is. The organization isn’t being malicious. It simply never crossed anyone’s mind that an explanation was necessary.

For Monday night’s Yankees versus Orioles game, the over/under is set at 8.5 total runs on DraftKings. Our complete