This story was excerpted from Bryan Hoch’s Yankees Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
If Jazz Chisholm Jr. is -- as he believes -- ready to take off and put up the numbers he forecast this season, then his shortest career home run may have been the turning point.
“I feel pretty good,” Chisholm said during the Yankees’ series against the Astros. “I feel like me again.”
Chisholm arrived at Fenway Park last week searching for answers, grinding through an early-season skid. That hasn’t been unfamiliar territory; cold weather has never suited him, though he understands that only buys so much patience.
After sitting out the Yankees’ April 19 rain-delayed victory over the Royals at Yankee Stadium, Chisholm used the extra time to reset. The days that followed provided an opportunity to focus on mechanical tweaks, which he feels are giving him more space to work with.
“I backed off the plate and closed up a little bit, because I feel like I’ve been opening up a little bit,” Chisholm said. “I feel like that helped me close up a little bit, just backing off and staying close.”
That progress came slowly. A window into Chisholm’s dented confidence came in the sixth inning that first night in Boston, when he came up with two men on and two outs -- a prime opportunity to swing away, aiming to drive in runs.
Instead, Chisholm passed the baton, dropping a bunt up the third-base line for a single. With hits so scarce, he wasn’t about to argue with a chance to raise his batting average -- especially since it gave him his first multi-hit game of the year.
Yet Chisholm -- who boasted this spring that he was setting his sights on 50 homers and 50 stolen bases -- still has big goals in mind.
“It’s still early,” he said. “The season just started. We’re not even a full month in. I’m starting to feel good at the right time.”
Two days later, he found something louder. Facing Boston’s Payton Tolle, Chisholm wrapped his first home run of the season around Pesky’s Pole, a Statcast-projected 333-foot shot.
“I wouldn’t say home runs were on my mind. It would be hits more than home runs,” he said. “I tend to have a little couple of problems early in the season.”
It may have been exactly what he needed; including that last night at Fenway, Chisholm enters Monday’s series opener against the Rangers batting .438 (7-for-16) with two walks, two homers and six RBIs in his past four games.
That’s a legitimate hot streak already, one he expects to continue as the Yanks move along to another Texas city, from Houston to Arlington to open their set against the Rangers on Monday.
As his confidence returns, so has his personality -- making it easier to joke about his struggles with the Automatic Ball-Strike challenge system. He’s now just 1-for-7 after an obvious miss during the Houston series, for which Chisholm said he was fining himself $1,000.
“It’s a kid’s game,” Chisholm said. “You’ve got to laugh at some things. Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh at yourself.”