TAMPA, Fla. — The first rumblings about Anthony Volpe, the next great hope of the New York Yankees, were silences that spoke loudly. When a raft of high-profile shortstops hit the market ahead of 2022 — Corey Seager, Carlos Correa and Marcus Semien among them — the Yankees turned away despite coming to the public realization that Gleyber Torres was not a long-term fit for the position. When another wave of shortstops became available this winter, the Yankees once again sat out the chase.
The noise, absent from the Bronx, was instead building in the New York exurbs.