{"id":673227,"date":"2026-04-11T11:33:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/673227\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:33:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:33:03","slug":"yankees-news-volpe-slated-to-start-upon-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/673227\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees news: Volpe slated to start upon return"},"content":{"rendered":"

NY Post | Greg Joyce:<\/a> Anthony Volpe has reunited with the Yankees as they arrived in Tampa to play the Rays this weekend, the injured shortstop having taken an extended stay at the team\u2019s complex while rehabbing from offseason surgery on his labrum. The time for a rehab assignment is nearing, and could come as early as Tuesday after meeting with the team physician for a final check-up, but once he\u2019s fully ready to go what will his role with the team be? General manager Brian Cashman gave the strongest indication that he\u2019ll be back as the starting shortstop that we\u2019ve heard since the offseason, confirming \u201cthat\u2019s always been the plan\u201d when reporters asked. He did leave a caveat that \u201cultimately that\u2019ll be the manager\u2019s call\u201d on starting Volpe, but there\u2019s little doubt that the GM and manager will be in lockstep on this.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Caballero had a chance to make this a more debatable choice with the starting gig wide open for the first month of the season, but his bat has been ice cold to start the year. A .135\/.200\/.162 triple-slash isn\u2019t inspiring any confidence, and the team was already inclined to go back to Volpe once healthy after assessing the team in the offseason. Given how dreadful the bottom of the lineup has performed, an early season performer like Volpe could win a lot of favor back in his court by jumping back in with some timely hits.<\/p>\n

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NJ.com | Bob Klapisch ($):<\/a> We\u2019ve seen high highs and low lows with this 2026 team already, jumping out to a 7-1 start that was tops in the league with electric pitching just to watch as the bats have gone missing and been unable to support the staff amidst a 1-4 skid that\u2019s mainly been punctuated by three consecutive losses. It\u2019s early, yes, so the answer of what this Yankees team is likely falls somewhere between those two results, but some very real flaws have been exposed as stats begin to stabilize.<\/p>\n

AP | Ronald Blum:<\/a> The average salary of an MLB player rose for another year after Opening Day payrolls were made official, seeing a 3.4 percent jump from 2025 to a record $5.34 million. Overall, the growth of the game\u2019s major-league side of the financials has been on a steady climb following the pandemic, recovering from a slow decline in the late 2010s, but the underlying concern is that the extreme spenders and thrifters have both gotten stronger: six teams paid out over $250 million this year instead of four last year, while eight teams spent under $100 million as opposed to five in 2025. The median salary also grew slightly, up to $1.4 million from $1.35 million, but it still hasn\u2019t come close to the median record set back in 2015. With a lockout all but assumed to be arriving after this season concludes, these numbers paint a picture of the opening lines that the union and owners will set their trenches against, so it\u2019s worth familiarizing yourself with them now.<\/p>\n

MLB Trade Rumors | Charlie Wright:<\/a> Former Yankee Mike Ford is taking on a front office role with the Tampa Bay Rays, which would all but confirm that the first baseman is electing to retire from the game after spending last season abroad in Japan. Ford had a sensational stint with the Yankees in 2019 filling in for an injured Edwin Encarnacion, hitting for a .909 OPS in 50 games, but his subsequent 2020 season didn\u2019t fare nearly as well and he played only a minor role in that year as well as in 2021, leading to a trade that sent him to Tampa. Now he\u2019ll get the chance to work with the Rays\u2019 minor leaguers in a still-undefined role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NY Post | Greg Joyce: Anthony Volpe has reunited with the Yankees as they arrived in Tampa to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[1205,5,17782,12536,1628,9636,1965,4,62,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-673227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-anthony-volpe","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-edwin-encarnacion","11":"tag-ford","12":"tag-getty-images","13":"tag-icon-sportswire","14":"tag-jose-caballero","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-new-york-yankees","17":"tag-rays","18":"tag-tampa-bay","19":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","20":"tag-tampabay","21":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116385861085034003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}