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Inside The Pinstripes

Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s Ugly Play Symbolizes Bad Vibe Around Yankees

The New York Yankees lost an ugly one, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. was at the center of it all.
Joseph Randazzo|
Apr 11, 2026; St. Petersburg, Florida, USA; New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. (13) throws to first against the Tampa Bay Rays in the second inning at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Apr 11, 2026; St. Petersburg, Florida, USA; New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. (13) throws to first against the Tampa Bay Rays in the second inning at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

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New York Yankees

The baseball season has its twists and turns. The feeling around a team can change fast, but there probably should not be this many waves of emotion before even hitting mid-April. A week ago, the New York Yankees won a game they should have lost.

They stormed back against the Marlins, outlasting a tremendous outing by Max Meyer. It felt like their identity was going to be that tough-to-kill, gritty comeback team.

Seven days later, things are different. They have lost five of their last six, and their most recent loss was one in which victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat, blowing three different leads.

Losing is one thing. How the Yankees lost, though, is another. It doesn't even feel like the team that won last week is the same one on the field now.

With the bases loaded and one out, David Bednar induced a groundball that went right to Jazz Chisholm Jr., who has been one of the best statistical second basemen in the sport the last two years. The results were ugly.

Chisholm's Bad Night

Chisholm took control of the ball on a tough hop, but then immediately bobbled it when he could have tagged the runner. In the best-case scenario, he could have gotten the tag for the out and then thrown to first for a spectacular double play. Instead, he missed the runner and then made an even worse throw.

Granted, it still would have been a close play. Even if Chisholm were perfect, it still could have been for naught. It was just the visual of the bad bobble and horrid toss to first that represented everything about where the Yankees are right now.

Chisholm didn't help himself after the game when asked about what happened, too. His explanation made a bad loss look even worse.

Chisholm is one of those lightning rods in the sport. He just has a way about him that attracts attention to extreme degrees, both positively and negatively. The fact is, even the most ardent defenders would have to admit he put his foot in his mouth here.

Not only did the play look bad from an aesthetic standpoint, but he came out of the night as someone who doesn't understand the rules of the sport. The New York market is too big and too combustible for an athlete to draw that kind of attention to themselves when emotions were already high.

Postgames

The Yankees fanbase as a whole should generally avoid postgame scrums after losses like that. It could be good for their overall mental well-being to just turn off the YES Network at that point, because this is what the players and manager will do after losses. They'll figure out a way to make one feel worse after the loss. Of course, Chisholm's explanation was an outlier.

He went through his thought process and gave an absurd rationale for what he was thinking at the time, but for the most part, the answers will invariably be benign. They rarely address just how bad a game, moment, or performance looked.

They'll dance between being defensive or giving those Jeter-like cardboard cutout answers, which have been known to be sewn into the fabric of postgames. That, or the manager will talk about how corners are about to be turned. The most emotion anybody will get is a table smack — but a feeble table smack at that.

Would it be so bad for a player, manager, GM, or owner of this team to just admit that things look bad and leave it at that? No, it wouldn't fix what happened, but an acknowledgment, rather than a tone of apathy, could be nice every so often. That or understanding the rules.

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Joseph Randazzo
JOSEPH RANDAZZO

Joe Randazzo is a reference librarian who lives on Long Island. When he’s not behind a desk offering assistance to his patrons, he writes about the Yankees for Yankees On SI. Follow him as @YankeeLibrarian on X and Instagram.

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