After the hardest-hit batted ball of his short career — a 102.1-mph triple, also his first extra-base hit — Anthony Volpe seemed more pleased with a swing he did not take.

Down 0-2 to Cole Irvin in Baltimore on Saturday, the Yankees shortstop laid off a 90-mph, spinny four-seam fastball just above the strike zone for ball one.

Irvin then missed with a four-seamer that was low in the zone and in the middle of the plate, which Volpe crushed off the right-field wall.

“I tried to make an adjustment on how to approach him with two strikes,” a smiling Volpe said after the game. “I laid off a pretty good, competitive pitch and just got the barrel to the ball.”

It represented a positive sign amid a mostly negative couple weeks at the plate for the 21-year-old: He has begun to learn how to deal with high pitches, particularly fastballs, which appears to be the biggest adjustment for a young player who barely saw even Triple-A pitching.

Through the first 12 games and four series of Volpe’s career, opposing pitchers threw 21 four-seam fastballs at the top of the zone or just above it.

Of those 21, three resulted in strikeouts; three in flyouts; 10 were strikes, either called, swung through or fouled off; and just five were balls. Volpe has struggled to not swing, and then he has struggled to make solid contact (or any contact at all). Of his first five career hits, all were in the middle or at the bottom of the strike zone.

Plenty of young hitters struggle with the velocity and spin rates with moving four-seamers that dot the top of the zone, and despite the way Volpe often looked in camp, he is like a lot of young hitters. Major league pitching is difficult to hit.

Two weeks into his career, Volpe is trying to adjust his way into being a major leaguer.

Volpe’s glove has been solid, but he was 5-for-35 after leaving Cleveland to open his career and facing an increasing number of fastballs, particularly high in the zone.

In the first series of the season, the Giants threw him 47.7 percent fastballs. In the second, the Phillies elevated to 52.3 percent fastballs. The Orioles cranked it up to 56 percent fastballs. In a smaller sample size against Cleveland, where Volpe received his first off day, he saw 55.6 percent fastballs.

Last weekend, Volpe was asked to assess how he had fared at the plate thus far. He did not point to his batting average or lack of power as sources of frustration, but rather his inability to make a quick adjustment. That usually takes time.

“At the plate, I feel like I wasn’t making adjustments, and that was the most frustrating part to me,” Volpe said after his triple, which did not appear to be a breakthrough at-bat: He went 1-for-10 in the span since entering Thursday’s opener against the Twins.

By the finale of the Orioles series, the game plan was clear. On Sunday, Baltimore’s Tyler Wells struck out Volpe with a high, four-seam fastball in the third inning, then got Volpe to fly out on another four-seamer in the fifth. In the seventh, Logan Gillaspie missed with four pitches — two four-seamers — on a quick walk, before Michael Baumann induced a flyout from Volpe in the ninth with yet another four-seamer.

Oswaldo Cabrera played 580 games in the minors before the utilityman finally got his shot (and ran with it) last season. He quickly noticed the quality of competition, which is impossible to imitate.

“In minor leagues, a pitcher can make mistakes,” Cabrera said. “In the big leagues, you have to take advantage when they make a big mistake because they don’t do that too much.”

Cabrera has watched Volpe struggle against fastballs, but he’s not concerned. Volpe hit them well in spring training and will have to continue to adjust to the speed and precision of the major league game.

“We know who Anthony is. We know he’s a superstar,” Cabrera said. “Whatever is happening right now is just baseball — that’s part of baseball.”

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Clay Holmes has looked like the Clay Holmes of old — or has he?

The results have been there for the Yankees closer, who tallied his fourth save in Wednesday’s rubber-game victory in Cleveland. Holmes’ three walks are too many, but he has not cost the Yankees a game and often looked dominant.

But the pitch that made Holmes dominant is no longer his only pitch.

When the righty reliever went from Pittsburgh to The Bronx in 2021, he threw sinkers 73.2 percent of the time. Last season, he upped the percentage to 80.3 percent. This year, it was down to 66.7 percent entering the Twins series.

In the early going, Holmes is throwing his slider and sweeper more than ever. When he got into trouble Wednesday, it was his slider he turned to — two straight that induced a pair of whiffs — to strike out Amed Rosario and save the game.

This season, he is up to 20.4 percent sliders (which are thrown harder) and 12.9 percent sweepers (which are softer and move more).

Willie Calhoun made a strong impression in camp and has contributed since his call-up, including a bases-loaded single to drive in the tying run in Tuesday’s win in Cleveland.

The Yankees have been happy about the corner outfielder’s bat. He has been happy about his mind.

In 2020, Calhoun was drilled in the face by a 95-mph fastball from the Dodgers’ Julio Urias. He recovered, but a year later he broke his forearm when Kansas City’s Kris Bubic struck him with a fastball.

His 2022 season with the Rangers and Giants was a mess in which he hit .135 in 22 games.

“I had a little bit of anxiety from the broken face and then the broken arm a year later,” Calhoun said recently. “It didn’t really work for me last year — I was still a little bit timid.”

He still did not feel comfortable in the box, a topic he talked with Giancarlo Stanton about. The slugger, who was drilled in the face with a fastball in 2014, suffering season-ending facial fractures, told Calhoun it took him a while to feel OK back in the batter’s box.

Calhoun said he was “not in a good place last year,” and he trained this offseason on trying to become the hitter — in technique and mindset — who posted an .848 OPS in 2019. He has worked with a mental-skills coach in Dallas, who has tried to help him overcome “that fear of breaking the jaw.”

Calhoun, in the fight for at-bats in a crowded outfield, is trying to get back in the box.