Yankees' Jazz Chisholm Jr. still has time to turn season around following two home run game
Entering Monday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. was hitting .224 with a .705 OPS — not what New York saw out of him last season, nor what Chisholm expects out of himself.
Still, there were signs that he was beginning to come alive from his season-long slump, including a four-game hitting streak and a late go-ahead home run to break a 1-1 tie with the Dodgers Sunday night.
Then came Monday’s series opener, where Chisholm hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat, giving him back-to-back home runs in consecutive at-bats, to put the Yanks up 4-0. For an encore, the slugger mashed his second home run of the night in the third inning, this one a two-run shot, that gave him 16 on the season and three in as many AB’s.
“He’s capable of that,” manager Aaron Boone said after the game. “When he gets it rolling he’s capable of big things and obviously that was a big night for him and for us tonight.”
New York needed every bit of Chisholm’s massive night in what ended as an 8-5 win after starter Ryan Weathers struggled early but gave the Yanks for 4.2 innings in a game where the bullpen was short.
Chisholm’s two-home run performance now gives him a five-game hitting streak, eight hits (four home runs) in his last seven games, and an .815 slugging percentage over that span as well. And after a dismal June, Chisholm is batting .260 with an .856 OPS in July — much more similar to his numbers last season.
Even though the results haven’t been there consistently for the 28-year-old, who went as far to say his season “sucked” recently, he knows there’s still plenty of time to salvage the rest of his regular season.
“There’s still two and a half months [in the season], like there’s a lot that can happen in two and a half months, especially on a baseball field,” Chisholm said. “So for me, I feel like it’s more than enough time to just flip the whole season around.”
At the same time, Chisholm is less focused on his personal numbers and concentrating more on helping his team win. On Monday night, he did that in a big way.
“I just wanna win,” he said. “Honestly that’s all I’m feeling. Like I’m going up there and trying to just help my team win. In the first at-bat I wasn’t trying to hit a home run, I was just trying to hit a fly ball to the outfield, get the run in and it happened to just go out.”
Still, the Yankees and Boone know that in order for them to win, Chisholm needs to perform, especially with the continued absence of Aaron Judge.
Speaking of Judge, he and nearly the rest of the team gave Chisholm a boost of confidence recently by telling him that he’s the best player in the world, something Chisholm tells himself all the time, but as his struggles worsened, became harder to believe.
Then he hit that home run on Sunday and things changed for Chisholm.
“It gave me a lot of confidence, I can say that,” he said. “I mean it’s always nice when you are successful. For me, it gave me a lot. A good boost.”
With two more long balls on Monday, Chisholm has found his power stroke and is a dangerous hitter in the middle of New York’s lineup. It also brought his OPS up to .726 which is as high as it’s been in nearly a month.
What’s also impressive about the recent home runs is they all came on different pitches – fastball, curveball and slider, meaning Chisholm is seeing the ball really well.
“When he’s going good he’s a game changer,” Boone said. He can beat you in a lot of different ways. So we need it. We need him to get going like we know he’s capable of and go on one of those runs that we’ve seen him do a lot here over these last couple of years.”
Aside from the low average, Chisholm is still impacting the game, including with his 26 stolen bases, 43 RBI and 51 runs scored in 95 games.
“He’s in position here, with a couple of good months, to be right in line with what he’s had in the last couple of seasons,” Boone said. “It’s a long season, you go through a lot of different things. Hitting is as hard as ever, but he’s in position to hopefully go out and do something special for us the rest of the way.”
