Alexander Wilson
Four straight losses. The Yankees dropped to 8-5 on Saturday night against the Rays, and while the pitching has not been the problem, the infield outside of first base has been a consistent drain on a team that was supposed to have one of the better lineups in the American League. Ben Rice is doing his part. Nobody else in the infield is doing theirs right now, and Saturday provided three separate storylines to illustrate exactly how much this group needs to improve.
Jose Caballero
Caballero actually had his best game of the season on Saturday, going 2-for-4 with three RBIs and showing some of the contact ability the Yankees were hoping to see more consistently. His Statcast page tells the story of a hitter who has been swinging at more pitches out of the zone than expected, which has limited the hard contact he needs to generate given his lack of raw power. For the New York Yankees, Saturday was encouraging in the sense that the at-bats looked more controlled.
But he is still hitting .156/.208/.200 on the season, which is what it is. The sample is large enough now that the slow start cannot be blamed entirely on variance. Caballero has never been an above-average hitter and this stretch is confirming that reality over a sustained period. The good news is Anthony Volpe is targeting a return within the next few weeks, and when he arrives, Caballero goes back to the bench role his profile was always built for.
Jazz Chisholm
This is where Saturday got genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Chisholm is hitting .173/.232/.250 in a contract year, which is already a problem, but the final play of Saturday’s extra-inning loss was a different kind of concerning. With the bases loaded and a ground ball hit his way, he attempted to tag the runner heading to second and then throw to first for a double play rather than firing home for the force out. The run scored. The Yankees lost.
After the game, Chisholm tried to make sense of his decision in a way that only made things worse. “I was really gonna tag the runner and throw it to first,” he said. “I don’t know what the rule is, if I went to first base first and threw it back to second if it’s an out. Is it still a double play? I don’t know. Does it count as not an RBI?”
Trent Grisham had to step in to clarify. “They’ll score,” Grisham said. Chisholm: “They’ll still score?” Grisham: “They’ll get there before the tag at second.”
It was a heads-up play that never came together, and Chisholm’s postgame confusion about the rules made a bad moment worse. He is a veteran second baseman. He has played in big games and high-pressure situations. Not knowing the force-out rule with the bases loaded in extra innings is not a mental lapse you can explain away with cold weather. It was a baseball mistake at a critical moment, and in a contract year where every game matters for his market value, it was precisely the wrong moment to make it.
The Yankees need Chisholm to be the player who hit 31 home runs and stole 31 bases last season. Right now they are getting a below-average hitter who made a fundamental error that ended a game the team needed to win.
Ryan McMahon
McMahon is hitting .097/.263/.097 and has been statistically one of the worst hitters in baseball through the first two weeks of the season. The walk rate remains functional, which is the one thing keeping his OBP from being even more catastrophic, but the batting average and slugging percentage are approaching historically bad territory for a starting third baseman on a contending team.
The Coors Field context still applies. McMahon spent nine years playing half his games in the most hitter-friendly park in baseball and his road numbers were always considerably weaker than his home production. The Yankees gambled on a mechanical adjustment bridging that gap. The adjustment has not arrived, and at some point the organization has to start planning around what McMahon is rather than what they hoped he would become.
What Has to Happen
The Yankees are 8-5 and still in a reasonable position given the quality of their rotation. But a team that loses four straight because the bottom of its lineup cannot produce in key moments is not built to sustain that record through a 162-game season. Chisholm needs to find his 2025 form. McMahon needs to make contact. Caballero needs Volpe to come back so the roster can find the right structure again.
Saturday was fixable. Another four-game skid is not.
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