Alexander Wilson
The New York Yankees have won eight of their last nine games, and while the pitching and Ben Rice’s ridiculous start have driven most of that run, a quieter development deserves attention. Jazz Chisholm is coming around. After one of the worst starts to a season of his career, the 28-year-old second baseman has been genuinely productive over the past two weeks, and the timing matters enormously given what’s at stake for him personally this year.
Over the last 15 days, Chisholm is hitting .267/.377/.422 across 45 at-bats, collecting the majority of his home runs and RBIs in that stretch. For a player who was hitting .170 with zero power production in the first week of April, that turnaround is significant. The cold weather excuse he offered a few weeks ago is starting to look more like an accurate explanation than a deflection, which is both reassuring and slightly concerning given that October is also cold, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
What He Is and What He Isn’t
His full season line still reflects the difficult start. Through 27 games, Chisholm is at .216/.303/.330 with an 81 wRC+, two home runs, and nine RBIs. That’s 19% below the league average hitter, and in a contract year where he needs every at-bat to count toward the market value he’s been chasing, the first month has not done him any favors. The power that made him a 30-30 player last season is still not fully online. The strikeout rate remains elevated. The walks are better than they were in April but still inconsistent.
The defense is where he continues to separate himself. Chisholm has four outs above average and -2 defensive runs saved across 223.2 innings at second base, which places him among the better defensive second basemen in the American League. His range, his arm, and his instincts in the field are elite. The Yankees have always gotten full value from that side of his game even in the stretches where the bat has gone quiet.
The Contract Situation Looming in the Background
Brian Cashman has a well-documented reluctance to pay premium money at second base. Gleyber Torres was productive for years and still walked out the door at the end of his deal. Chisholm is a better player than Torres was at his peak, but the organizational philosophy hasn’t changed, and there’s every reason to believe the Yankees are prepared to let him enter free agency if the asking price exceeds what they’re comfortable paying.
Chisholm reportedly wants something in the range of $30 million annually. The Yankees have shown no urgency to get a deal done, and Cashman’s posture throughout the spring has been that these things resolve themselves in November. If Chisholm has a big second half and finishes the year with something close to last season’s 30-30 production, his market is going to be enormous and the gap between what he wants and what the Yankees will offer will likely widen, not narrow.
What the Yankees need from him right now isn’t a contract negotiation. It’s the version of Chisholm who heats up in May and doesn’t cool down. The one who steals bases, drives in runs, and makes the middle of this lineup genuinely difficult to navigate. He’s showing signs of becoming that player again over the past two weeks. Staying there is the only thing that matters between now and October.
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