Anthony Volpe’s ability to make adjustments at the plate is no less impressive to Jake Hirst seeing it for the third time than it is to Yankees fans just making the discovery.
Volpe entered the All-Star break Sunday by hitting his 13th home run and continuing to fight back from the season-low .186 batting average and .260 on-base percentage that he owned one month ago today.
The rookie shortstop is up to .213 and .287, respectively.
“He’s in position to have a really strong second half,” manager Aaron Boone said.
Just as public cries to send him to the minor leagues started to bubble, Volpe hit .379 over an 18-game stretch, which is reminiscent of the way that he started slowly but found his stride long before hitting a playoff-berth-clinching home run on the final day of the first half last July for the Double-A Somerset Patriots.
“Anthony has a keen sense of who he is, which allows him to stay calm and consistent when the results are hard to come by,” Hirst, the hitting coach for Somerset, told The Post.
“He communicates well and has a track record of being able to digest information and turn it into actionable adjustments.”
Volpe taking action looks a lot like jogging around the bases. For all the hype surrounding his game-changing speed, he is tied with Gleyber Torres — behind only Aaron Judge — for second on the team in home runs.
“Thirteen is a pretty good number for the first half … for a guy that’s had his ups and downs and really done a great job of making adjustments,” Boone said.
“He’s hit for power [in the minors], so I can’t say I’m overly surprised. I talk about this team and their compete, Anthony embodies that.”
Hirst, who first coached Volpe at Single-A Hudson Valley, appreciates the efficiency of the swing that allows Volpe to generate more pop than expected from a 5-foot-9, 180-pound frame.
“Over the past few offseasons, Anthony has done a great job adding strength and power to maximize his frame … and maintaining his weight and strength throughout the season,” Hirst said. “He continues to have great mobility, which affords him a very elastic swing.
“He transfers energy from his body to the bat very well, which, as we have seen, produces some potentially unexpected power.”
Steady power aside, Volpe’s other struggles — he hit .174 with a .529 OPS in May — taught him more than an uninterrupted path to success would have.
“I definitely learned that I can rely on my teammates,” Volpe said. “Never at one point — good, bad or indifferent — did I feel like I was experiencing it alone, even though I’m kind of the only rookie. Going forward the rest of this season, into next year and the years after that, knowing these guys have my back the same way I want to have their back.”
The timing of Volpe’s resurgence also accidentally put him at the center of a storm.
The story that Volpe and former Somerset teammate Austin Wells noticed a flaw in Volpe’s too-closed batting stance while watching old film and eating chicken parmesan together on a Yankees off day became the loudest criticism of hitting coach Dillon Lawson.
But it was far from the sole reason for Lawson’s firing after Sunday’s game.
“Over the course of the season, you are going to make adjustments — some click and some don’t — and you are going to ride certain streaks,” Volpe said before the coaching change was revealed. “We obviously know we haven’t played our best and we have another gear to get to.”
Boone showed his faith by putting Volpe back atop the lineup for three games last week.
When Volpe’s bat cooled (0-for-11) in response, he dropped back to the No. 8 hole and promptly launched the tie-breaking two-run home run off of Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks.
“He started me off with something soft away,” Volpe said, “and then he was coming in on me pretty much the whole day with heaters and I was a little late on them.”
Adjustment made.
For what it’s worth, Derek Jeter didn’t hit more than 10 home runs until his third full MLB season.
Boone plans to keep Volpe near the bottom of the lineup when games resume Friday “to keep that length going.”
He and Volpe both see the dip in production when Volpe leads off as coincidence.
“Good or bad, I don’t really like looking at the results,” Volpe said. “If you look back at those [three games], I hit a lot of balls hard — just right at people.”
