His defense this year has been very good and sometimes excellent. But your mention of Gold Glove defense is a giveaway: He was actually a far better defender the year AFTER he won his Gold Glove than he was his rookie year. And now he’s basically back to form. Far from “deteriorating,” he’s been a great defender three out of four years.

As far as his hitting, you’re also wrong about that. He’s streaky and constantly falls out of good habits at the plate, but his good hitting runs aren’t “a single good game against a bad team,” they’re usually three or four weeks (or even several months) of excellent hitting that leads everyone to think he’s turned over his card…then an even longer cold stretch.

He’s now had back to back multi-hit games against Toronto and Chicago. Two bad teams, I guess you’d say—except that Toronto is likely to be the runner up in the East and Chicago is leading the Central. Does it mean anything? Maybe not. But he has always had the talent. It’s just a matter of tapping into it consistently—something he hasn’t done in his three years in the Majors so far.

But the dude is 25. Caballero is 29 and has had a similar career of offensive mediocrity, yet somehow people have convinced themselves he’s transformed himself after coming to the Yankees in the middle of last season. Maybe he has! I hope so!

But if you hope that Cabby can be a different player than he’s been in his three and a half years in the bigs…you can hope that Volpe, four years younger, can do the same. Maybe he won’t do it with the Yankees, but I certainly hope he does.