Jazz Chisholm Jr. hasn’t delivered the season he talked about in spring training, but the Yankees still have reason to believe his best stretch might be arriving at exactly the right time.
The second baseman is batting .231 with 19 homers and 40 stolen bases as September gets underway, and that stolen-base total ranks second in the American League. But the recent numbers have looked a lot sharper.
Over his last 20 games, Chisholm is hitting .311 with 19 hits, 2 home runs, 7 RBI and 12 runs scored. Over his last 10, he’s up to a .393 average with 11 hits, a homer, 4 RBI and 8 runs scored.
If that form carries through the final month and into the postseason, it could matter plenty for a Yankees club still trying to close ground in the division.
On Wednesday during the Yankees’ 6-3, 10-inning win over the Angels, YES broadcaster and Yankees legend Paul O’Neill laid out exactly why Chisholm can be such a dangerous piece when everything is clicking.
“Offensively, he can do so many things because he’s got 40 stolen bases,” O’Neill said.
“He can hit the ball out of the ballpark. He can hit lefties, so there’s a lot of things that he can do that makes him the full package offensively if he’s locked in.”
Chisholm also said earlier this season that “Aaron Judge [and] basically everybody” on the Yankees believes he’s the best player in the world.
The Yankees entered Friday’s game at San Diego with an 80-60 record and sitting 3 games back of the Rays in the AL East. With the race still within reach, the timing would seem ideal for Chisholm to keep rolling.
“And what a spark that could be for the Yankees because nobody denies that this guy has skills,” Michael Kay said on YES, “and when he is clicking, he is a force in a game.”
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The critique lands in a system that has generally produced results on the field, at least in the minors. Yankees farm clubs have been among the better offensive groups in baseball, leading their affiliates in runs scored, home runs and RBIs, which makes Torres comments as much a challenge to philosophy as to production. Even so, his remarks add another layer to the ongoing conversation around how the Yankees develop hitters and whether their process looks different from the box score. [Read more 🡒]