NEW YORK – It hasn’t been anything like the type of season Jazz Chisholm Jr. envisioned for himself. He’d love for this to be the swing that turns it around.
Chisholm cracked a tiebreaking home run off Evan Phillips in the eighth inning that powered the Yankees to a 2-1 victory over the Dodgers, salvaging the finale of a split-admission doubleheader on Sunday evening at Yankee Stadium.
“It’s definitely a long way out to left field,” Chisholm said. “I just forget about all the stuff that happened early in the game and lock in on that one at-bat. I’m just trying to help my team win any way I can.”
After the Yankees were largely silenced by Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s complete-game effort in Sunday’s first game, an 8-2 loss, manager Aaron Boone said that his team’s scuffling lineup “has got to do more.”
The Bombers’ bats were limited to Cody Bellinger’s first-inning RBI single through the first seven innings of the nightcap. Chisholm answered the call late, taking a Phillips fastball to the opposite field for his 14th home run of the season.
“That was a huge, huge swing there,” Bellinger said. “To go oppo, that’s a lot of power. It was just a really good win.”
“That gave us the spark we needed,” said Brent Headrick, who retired all six batters he faced in relief.
A potential free agent after the season, Chisholm came into the year with lofty aspirations, boasting that he planned to join Shohei Ohtani as the only players to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season.
Ohtani might have been in town this weekend, but Chisholm isn’t in his neighborhood. Chisholm said his performance has “sucked all season,” pointing to a .224/.302/.403 stat line that includes 14 homers and 26 steals.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Chisholm said.
The Yankees didn’t discourage Chisholm from shooting for the moon, but they never expected Chisholm to equal Ohtani’s numbers. They hoped he would replicate what he did last year, joining Bobby Bonds (1975) and Alfonso Soriano (2002, ’03) as the franchise’s only players to have 30-30 seasons.
At this point, 30-30 also seems out of reach, but it’s not too late for Chisholm to help the Yankees reach their playoff goals. To do that, Boone believes they need to squeeze more production out of every bat in the lineup, especially while Aaron Judge remains out indefinitely.
“We’ve got to be more consistent offensively, first and foremost,” Boone said. “That’s been the biggest thing that I think has ailed us through these few weeks. There were a couple of games where we didn’t play clean … but as a group, we’ve got to get going offensively and just be a little more complete.”
Bellinger believes the current group is capable of achieving that.
“I think out of the break, we expect more out of ourselves, absolutely,” Bellinger said. “It’s a good pitching staff over there, but we obviously expect to be better.”
It looked like the storyline of frustration might remain familiar when the Yankees flushed a prime scoring opportunity in the fifth inning, loading the bases with none out behind three singles.
Brock Stewart pitched out of the jam, striking out Jasson Domínguez, inducing Chisholm to foul out, then striking out Anthony Volpe. But as Boone said, “Fortunately, Jazz put one in the seats.”
Chisholm said he has been making mechanical tweaks all year in hopes of changing his luck.
“I tried to switch things up, and that makes it even worse,” Chisholm said. “I feel like that’s why I’ve been having an up-and-down season right now. I’ve just got to stick with it, even when I’m lining out, and not try to change anything.”
Both teams employed bullpen games, and Bellinger’s knock off Will Klein comprised the only scoring in the contest until the eighth, when Fernando Cruz surrendered Tommy Edman’s pinch-hit, game-tying homer.
That would stand as the only blemish by the Yanks’ staff in the nightcap, with Ryan Yarbrough, Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick and David Bednar all pitching scoreless ball. Bednar picked up the victory, recording the final five outs.
“It all starts with Yarbs, coming in there first and getting us going,” Headrick said. “I thought he did an incredible job, and everybody else that came in just kept setting the tone. We came in and we did what we wanted to do.”