Jazz Chisholm Jr. has never been one to hide his feelings, which is why it was obvious he was upset about not being in the lineup for Game 1 of the wild-card series Tuesday despite trying to say the right things.
But when it came down to it, his manager had a simple message before Chisholm got back in the lineup for Game 2 against Red Sox righty Brayan Bello.
“I don’t need him to put a happy face on it right now,” Aaron Boone said Wednesday afternoon. “I need him to go play his tail off, which I know he’s going to do. Hopefully can help us, do his thing and impact us winning a game.”
Chisholm created a stir Tuesday night, after a 3-1 loss to the Red Sox, by spending most of his two-minute scrum with his back turned to reporters while answering questions about not being in the lineup to start the game.
The Yankees were facing dominant lefty Garrett Crochet and wanted to stack their lineup with as many right-handed bats as possible, which meant Amed Rosario starting at second base over Chisholm — and not at third base, where José Caballero started because the Yankees wanted superior defense there with Max Fried on the mound.
Coming off a 30-30 regular season, the dynamic left-handed hitting Chisholm — normally the most loquacious player in the clubhouse — said the Yankees “got to do whatever we got to do to win,” but he was not convincing in his words, his dissatisfaction dripping through them.
“Obviously he’s not the most vanilla guy,” Boone said. “He’s going to wear his emotions on his sleeve sometimes. Not the way I would go about it.”
While Chisholm claimed he was informed of the lineup decision in a Monday night text message from Boone, the manager said the two spoke in his office on Monday, when he explained to Chisholm that he was considering not having him in the lineup against Crochet.
“Look, not every guy’s going to love every decision that I have to make, and that’s OK,” Boone said. “I try to help them understand it. We spoke about it. I think he understood.”
Chisholm had sat the last time the Yankees faced a lefty starter in the regular season (Trevor Rogers), though at the time Boone had described that as probably not being the case against “most” lefties moving forward. And before that game, when healthy, Chisholm had been in the starting lineup against 23 of the 28 left-handers the Yankees faced. The only exceptions were the Orioles’ Cade Povich, the Astros’ Framber Valdez and three of the four matchups against Crochet.
Ben Rice was also out of the lineup Tuesday with the right-handed hitting Paul Goldschmidt starting at first base (going 2-for-4) and Austin Wells catching Fried (like he had for 27 of his 32 regular-season starts).
Unlike Rice, though, Chisholm actually got into the game as a defensive replacement in the top of the eighth, and eventually flied out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth against Aroldis Chapman.
After a night when Boone faced plenty of second-guessing for his decisions — sitting Chisholm and Rice, pulling Fried from a shutout at 102 pitches, not pinch running for Goldschmidt in the bottom of the ninth — he said the one that stuck with him was whether he should have kept Rosario in the game.
His thought at the time was that the Yankees had righty relievers coming in, meaning the Red Sox were going to pinch hit their lefty bats, leading to more ground balls to the right side and he wanted Chisholm’s defense. But the Yankees were trailing 2-1 at the time and Boone knew that Chapman — against whom Rosario was 3-for-7 with two home runs — was looming in the bullpen.
“That’s a very fair question,” Boone said. “That is the challenge. The inning before, the ball’s starting to go over there [to second base], and just the range, and knowing some more lefties are going to be in the lineup at that point with our righties in the game. Just kind of wanted him in there. But fair point.”
Source link
