It’s more than fair to say that the Yankees didn’t do enough at the trade deadline, with both Mark Leiter Jr. and Enyel De Los Santos being negative contributors this season. With that being said, the one move they made that has worked out for them has been a roaring success, and that’s the addition of Jazz Chisholm. The young infielder has been everything the Yankees could have wanted and more offensively, and while he’s still adjusting to a new position, I’ve been more than impressed with his approach shift since donning the pinstripes.
Jazz has brought power and speed to the Bronx, playing with an aggressive style and boisterous personality that greatly contrasts with the usually patient and tame Yankees we’ve come to know. A reflection of the modern game, the Yankees need to embrace the kind of baseball he plays not just in 2024, but moving forward as well.
Jazz Chisholm Is a Breath of Fresh Air on the Yankees
It’s kind of hard to picture this now given how good Jazz Chisholm has been with the Yankees, but he had a 100 wRC+ when they acquired him from the Miami Marlins. That means that he was a perfectly average hitter, and the year prior he had a 101 wRC+, making him again just an average bat. A groundball-heavy lefty who was brought to the Bronx to provide a spark to this lineup, it’s very similar to the move they made to acquire Alex Verdugo in the offseason. He had a 98 wRC+ in 2023, meaning he was roughly as good as Chisholm offensively while providing better defense at his position.
This is where their similarities end, however, as while Alex Verdugo is having the worst year of his career, Jazz Chisholm comes over to New York with his head on fire. With nine home runs and eight stolen bases in just 23 games, the 26-year-old has set career bests in both marks for a single season and could threaten to steal 35-40 bases if he has a hot month of September. Offensively, he’s increased his wRC+ to 116 thanks to a 190 wRC+ in the Bronx, but the way he’s experienced this ascension is by hitting for way more power.
When you look at his heatmaps on batted balls at or above 25° in launch angle, you can see a dramatic difference in location.
There’s a lot more pull-side contact with the Yankees, and that’s because Yankee Stadium is one of the best spots to pull flyballs if you’re a left-handed hitter. There are doubles off the wall and short-porch bombs to be had, and it’s why the fanbase has begged the Yankees to add more left-handed hitting. Granted, this ballpark only plays better to left-handed hitters who try to hit for power, so the contact-heavy profile for those kinds of hitters doesn’t work well at all. This is where Alex Verdugo comes into play, as he took a far different approach to being a Yankee.
Acquired the day before the Yankees would land Juan Soto, Verdugo has pulled fewer flyballs this year than last year, having public comments where he’s discussed not trying to hit for power. He’s generating less damage contact and is lost as to why things haven’t gone his way, but that’s because he’s trying to be the exact kind of hitter who doesn’t perform well at Yankee Stadium. On the road, he has a 95 wRC+, which is right around the offensive production we saw last year from Verdugo, but in the Bronx, that number plummets to a 73; a product of not playing to what this stadium favors.
READ MORE: Yankees face a huge question with injured starters set for return this week
Yankee Stadium is a ballpark to crush dingers in; not a place to try and hit .300 at. That’s the reality for left-handed hitters, who are punished by that short right field if they’re hoping to squeeze singles in between the second baseman and right fielder. There’s a reason why Alex Verdugo is rolling over so much to second base, and it’s because he’s trying to shoot the ball perfectly to land for hits, instead of selling out and just trying to get the ball over the fence in right field.
The Yankees made it clear that left-handed bats were the priority over the winter, and while acquiring Juan Soto is an obvious success, they did really poor scouting on Alex Verdugo. They either had to acquire a power-hitting outfielder or go after someone who they could develop in the game power department, and they did neither. Aaron Boone talks about the quality of at-bat and while I know part of it is him not trying to rip his players publicly, we also know he does think highly of Verdugo, and that makes me wonder if they’re even aware of the fact that his profile is bad for the Bronx.
I don’t blame Alex Verdugo for not trying to hit for power, but I also think the Yankees should be held responsible for not understanding their ballpark as well. Juan Soto is pulling the ball more and it’s working; something he did despite telling reporters he wouldn’t change the way he hit because of this ballpark. Sure, he’s not a pull-happy hitter, but he’s certainly crushing more baseballs instead of trying to hit .300, which is nearly impossible for a lefty to do here, especially with the way modern batting averages have dipped.
Juan Soto is a freak of nature though, which is why Jazz Chisholm is a better comparison for me to use here. Alex Verdugo has the higher Max EV (112.4) between the two and also has a much better hit tool, and yet one hitter is leaps and bounds better than the other right now. Both were mediocre hitters this past July, but the difference is that Chisholm recognized the flaws in his game and has since adjusted. He’s the kind of hitter who will play well at Yankee Stadium because he’s the kind of hitter who can put a charge into a baseball.
Austin Wells took a leap once he began connecting for the longball, and I’m sure Alex Verdugo would have leaped had he tried to play more towards his pull-side power. As this organization reflects on this season and what’s caused this team to hit another summer rut, I hope that part of the equation is recognizing that they’re holding onto tradition. The days when this team could just grind out at-bats and collectively hit .280 were the ones that brought forth the dynasty Yankees, but the game has changed.
Tradition when left unquestioned is dangerous, and we’ve seen a once-dominant franchise sputter to remain at the top of the baseball world in terms of innovation. Just like the fans yearn for the days when a leadoff hitter was a .300 hitter with 30 steals and pitchers routinely went into the 7th and 8th innings, this franchise has started to look to their past to answer questions that they have today. What worked in an era where outfielders were slower and less dynamic won’t work in today’s game, and Jazz Chisholm is a perfect example of a modern solution to a current-day problem.
Perhaps this season can be a learning experience for the Yankees that comes with a World Series title as well. One where the power-hitting lefties who tried to pull the ball dominated, and the contact-oriented ones floundered as they realized they couldn’t BABIP their way to success in a ballpark built to suppress those kinds of hitters.