The Yankees are running out of patience with Jazz Chisholm Jr., and the answer might already be sitting in their own system.
Chisholm came into the year talking big, promising a 50-50 season. Instead, through August 5, he’s sitting on 17 home runs, 30 steals and a 93 wRC+, which is his worst mark since his first taste of big league action in 2020. That season, of course, came with only 62 plate appearances.
This has been the most extreme version of the Chisholm Jr. package the Yankees have seen in 2026. There have been huge moments when he looks like the kind of player who can flip a game in one swing or one burst on the bases.
There have also been the head-scratching plays, the sloppy stretches and, yes, the lollipop controversies. Yes, lollipops.
When Chisholm is rolling, he gives the Yankees some flair and a little lift on a roster that can feel too buttoned up at times. When he’s not, the whole act can wear thin.
That’s where the Yankees are now. He did post an .800 OPS in May, but every other month this season he’s been at .727 or worse.
Four games into August, he’s batting just .067, and with Aaron Judge out of the lineup, New York needs more offense than Chisholm has delivered.
If the Yankees want another option, Marco Luciano is the name that keeps popping up.
At some point, it’s fair to ask how much longer the Yankees can live with the uneven effort Chisholm has shown. That doesn’t have to mean cutting him loose.
A stint on the bench could make sense. But that only works if there’s somebody ready to step in, and Luciano may be that guy.
Luciano’s path to the Yankees has been a wild one. He was cut by the San Francisco Giants, claimed by the Pittsburgh Pirates and then DFA'd two weeks later.
Baltimore picked him up after that, only to DFA him quickly as well, which left him available to the Yankees. New York DFA'd him in January, too, but he cleared waivers and stayed in the organization in the minors.
Since then, he’s made a real case for himself. He opened the season in Somerset and absolutely crushed the ball, hitting .327/.410/.713 with 10 homers in 28 games.
That earned him a promotion to Scranton, where he’s continued to hit, putting up a .305/.395/.510 line with nine more home runs. Put it all together and he’s at .312/.400/.578 on the year.
The big-league track record is still thin. Luciano has played 41 MLB games, all of them coming in 2023 and 2024, and he hit just .217/.286/.304 in that stretch.
On paper, that can make him look like a Quad-A type. But there’s a reason people still believe there’s more here.
He was once a prized prospect, signed for $2.6 million out of the Dominican Republic in 2018. He climbed as high as No. 13 on MLB Pipeline’s top 100 list in 2022. He won’t turn 25 until September, and this is the first year he’s ever played outside the Giants’ system, so a real breakthrough isn’t hard to imagine.
Luciano also brings something the Yankees can use right now: he bats right-handed and can handle second base and the outfield. On a roster that leans left, that matters. A platoon with Chisholm would make plenty of sense, at least as an experiment.
There’s also a bigger-picture angle here. Chisholm is headed for free agency after the season, and after a year like this one, bringing him back doesn’t look like a given.
That gives Luciano even more importance. If he proves he belongs, the Yankees may have found their replacement already.
And if that happens, they’d also be giving themselves another way to bolster the roster for the 2026 stretch run.
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