Yankees ALDS At-Bat of the Week: Anthony Volpe draws bases-loaded walk

The Yankees travel to Kansas City with the ALDS tied at one game each. The series consisted of two games for the offense. In Game 1, the bats never gave up overcoming multiple deficits until victory was achieved, whereas in Game 2, those same bats never mustered enough sustained momentum to truly trouble the Royals' pitching staff. A common problem has been timely batting with men – the Yankees are a combined 3-for-19 team with runners in scoring position, with 19 runners stranded between both games.

Because of this inefficiency with runners, the Yankees found themselves in a 3-2 dilemma heading into the end of the fifth ALDS Game 1 after the bats squandered a crucial scoring opportunity in Game 1. Michael Wacha had an outing that was about bending but not breaking, allowing a slew of baserunners without giving up the killer hit but meant an eight-pitch walk from Gleyber Torres to start the inning the end of his competition.

Hard-throwing Angel Zerpa was the first arm out of the bullpen and the Yankees had immediate success, a single by Juan Soto and a walk by Aaron Judge loading the bases for Austin Wells, whose hard seven-pitch walk topped the winning run . However, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. both made quick outs, and so bases full of bases with no outs had become bases full of bases with two outs, and it felt like it would have been had it failed, at least scoring another run to retake the lead was a setback at that point.

Then comes Anthony Volpe, who was already 0-2 on the day with two fly outs. He is one of the least likely hitters in the lineup to draw a walk, and his quality of contact for much of the year did not inspire confidence that he would perform well in that situation. That's what makes the postseason so exciting – you never know who will take on the role of hero on any given day.

Reliever John Schreiber retired the first two batters he faced as he was tasked with getting the Royals out with Houdini. He starts Volpe with an elevated 89 mph cutter.

Even though Schreiber didn't have the ball in his hands most of the time, it wasn't an easy task. Schreiber throws his sinker about 10 percent more often than his cutter, and a sinker with that aiming point would likely end up over the middle of the plate. Even if Volpe accurately reads the fastball off-hand, there's about a 50/50 chance that it will end up either in or out of the zone.

Schreiber changes pace to a much more flexible breaker and manages to secure his place in the corner deep and away with a 1-0 sweeper.

I like this setting because Volpe can't do much with this pitch. As you can see, he recognizes the ball breaking early and expects the pitch to break just out of the zone, but Schreiber manages to get the ball in for a called strike. It's better to take the strike and fight another day than to swing and risk weak contact ending the inning.

Now that he's hit a called strike right at the corner, the obvious thing to do is for Schreiber to double down on the sweeper and throw it a little further down and away to see if he can get Volpe to follow up with another called strike or even steal.

Instead, Schreiber bounces the pitch in the dirt near home plate for a relatively easy hit. Volpe's two previous swing decisions may not look like much in a vacuum – a called strike and a straight hit on a ball in the dirt – but Volpe was the worst hitter in baseball against the sweeper during the regular season, at minus-6 Statcast Run Value and those two pitches would have easily been duds or weak dribblers when he really struggled in the summer.

Schreiber wants to get back into the game with a 2:1 cutter.

The catcher sets a target low, but Schreiber's early release means he gets well inside, allowing for another fairly straightforward shot.

Even though the count leverage is clearly in Volpe's favor at 3:1, it's still a pressure game. Are you in attack mode since this is probably the best throw you can hit on the AB? Or do you take a conservative approach and have the chance to take the lead on a walk? Volpe is likely to play a specific pitch in a specific location and leave the bat on his shoulder for everything else.

There's not much you can do here except put your cap on a perfectly executed 3-1 sinker. The ball starts some distance from the plate, so it's easy to give it up out of hand, only to watch the sideways movement of a foot and a half force it back over the corner for a well-aimed strike. It's an especially mean pitch considering Volpe has already seen four pitches in a row move away from him, making this pitch even more automatically out of hand.

Suddenly the Yankees are one hit away from blowing their best chance for a decisive lead. Everything has been gone so far except for the failed 2-1 cutter, so Schreiber sees his chance to attack the inside edge with a sinker that runs into Volpe's hands in hopes of setting up the soft contact at the end of the inning.

This is great bat control from Volpe to fight and stay alive off the field. Volpe isn't trying to do more than force Schreiber to throw at least one more pitch.

The best pitch Schreiber has thrown so far was the 3-1 sinker that Volpe gave up. He wants to end this encounter by repeating this delivery.

What a shot! Volpe recognizes sinkers and understands how the pitch moves as it approaches the plate. He also sees that this one starts a little further out than the one who just stole the corner to score second, so he forces the umpire to make a decision, and luckily for him and the Yankees, the umpire is right with his strike zone agree and signals ball four to give the starting signal.

Here is the full appearance of the plate:

In his first two seasons in the major leagues, Volpe has failed to produce the performance that his talent as a hitter promised. The Gold Glove-caliber defense is a pleasant and valuable surprise, but the reason the Yankees felt so confident in signing him as their long-term shortstop in his rookie year – aside from the salary savings – was the positives on his bat, that's the positive on the far left unused.

It was assumed that his keen eye and base skills would provide a stable offense, but those two elements were conspicuously missing. With a walk rate in the bottom fifth of the league and a chase rate well below league average, his performance depends almost entirely on his BABIP, and he doesn't hit the ball with enough authority – he's league-wide in expected slugging -Values ​​among the last ten percent and expected WOBA – in order to make it a sustainable approach.

That's why this entire plate appearance is motivation for the rest of the playoffs. Although he made a crucial error an inning later that allowed the Royals to secure their third lead of the game, the Yankees do not win this game. After the win, Aaron Boone referred to the “heavy offense” that destroyed the opposing pitching staff all game long, and the team needs to return to that approach if it wants to make it through this round and beyond.