BOSTON — Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed a big performance with even bigger words after the Yankees’ 5-3, series-winning victory over the Red Sox on Saturday, as he once again declared his club the team to beat.
“That we’re the best team in the league,” Chisholm responded when asked what statement the Yankees made by picking up their first series win against Boston this season. “I feel like any team that thinks they’re better than us, they should know when we step on the field that we’re coming with relentlessness. We’re coming to step on necks.
“We’re not here to play around.”
Chisholm delivered those remarks after his three-RBI performance at Fenway Park put the Yankees 2.5 games ahead of the Red Sox atop the American League wild card standings. Both teams are looking up at the Blue Jays, who lead the AL East by three games.
With 14 games left in the regular season, the Yankees are currently positioned to be the home team for a potential wild card rematch with Boston. However, with the Yankees still hoping to win their division, Chisholm said the team is disappointed with where its at in the standings.
“We’ve said it all year long: we’ve been playing to everybody else’s level instead of our own level,” Chisholm said. “We’ve been letting games go. We’ve been losing games ourselves, making errors, just having poor at-bats and stuff like that. So at the end of the day, we finally looked ourselves in the mirror and realized that we’re the team to beat, and that’s how we’ve been stepping on the field for the last two weeks.”
Chisholm was referring to the Yankees’ annual summer swoon, a losing period of sloppy play that lasted more than two months, but also the team’s recent surge. Their 23-11 record is the best in baseball since Aug. 6, and they’re 7-4 against Houston, Toronto, Detroit and Boston — all fellow contenders — since September began.
The Yankees’ turnaround began with a recent team get-together outside of a ballpark, according to Chisholm. He didn’t divulge many details and couldn’t remember a date — he mentioned a week or two ago — but he said “everybody started locking in” after that “team bonding” session.
“We had a team talk between all the boys,” Chisholm said. “We were just talking about at-bats and stuff like that. The next day, things went good.”
That remained the case Saturday, as the Yankees finally conquered Brayan Bello.
Of all the pitchers with at least 10 starts against the Yankees in the last 25 years, no one had a better ERA against the Bombers than the Red Sox righty, who entered Saturday’s game with a 1.95 mark over 10 outings and 60 innings. Bello had been especially dominant this season, holding the Yankees scoreless and striking out 13 batters over 14 innings and two starts.
“Hopefully that regresses to the mean a little bit,” Aaron Boone said before Saturday’s game.
The manager’s hopes became reality, as Bello allowed the Yankees’ first three batters to reach base when he hit Trent Grisham, surrendered a ground-rule double to Ben Rice and walked Aaron Judge. Cody Bellinger proceeded with a sac fly, while a dribbler off of Chisholm’s bat gave the Yankees a second run.
Chisholm added another RBI in the third, shooting a single through the vacated shortstop hole, before pulling a solo homer to right off Bello in the fifth.
“He got lucky the first few times,” Boone said before noting that Chisholm “absolutely demolished” his home run.
With 29 homers this season, the speedster needs just one more to enter the Yankees’ two-man 30-30 club, which also includes Bobby Bonds (32 HR, 30 SB in 1975) and Alfonso Soriano (39 HR, 41 SB in 2002 and 38 HR, 35 SB in 2003).
Another exclusive club welcomed Chisholm on Saturday, as he played in his 162nd game with the Yankees, a full season’s worth. He has totaled 40 home runs over that span, making him one of just six players to do so over their first 162 games with the Yankees, per Stathead’s Katie Sharp.
The others are Judge, Gary Sánchez, Jason Giambi, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth.
“All I want to do is help my team win,” Chisholm said. “All I want to do is come out with a win after the game every day, and I feel like today, I kind of did that a little bit.”
Chisholm also has 48 stolen bases over his Yankees tenure, which spans two seasons after he was acquired from the Marlins on July 27, 2024. While those 162 games won’t grant Chisholm access to the baseball’s prestigious 40-40 club, it’s certainly reasonable for him to think that he can get there in the future after an oblique strain cost him a month before a nagging groin injury limited his running for 39 games this year.
“He probably feels like he could be more than that,” Boone said with a laugh, alluding to Chisholm’s uber-confident personality.
Max Fried also felt like he could do more on Saturday, as the lefty talked Boone into staying in the game in the sixth inning after allowing two one-out singles. Fried got his wish, but Connor Wong knocked him out with another single, putting Boston down, 4-2, with two men on.
Fortunately for the Yankees, Luke Weaver took control of the situation and picked up two huge strikeouts. Having stopped the bleeding, he let out one of his “jungle cat” roars as he made his way back to the dugout.
“That’s a playoff atmosphere right there,” Weaver said.
Fried agreed, as his arsenal enjoyed a spike in velocity while as he logged 5.1 innings, nine hits, two earned runs, two walks and six strikeouts over 105 pitches. The first run he allowed came in the fifth when Alex Bregman homered off the Pesky Pole.
“Baseball this time of year, it’s all intense,” Fried said. “Every game that we go out there, we feel like we need to go out there and win it. So knowing that we’re both tight in the standings and that I don’t have very many opportunities left to go out there and start, I just wanted to make sure I left it all out there.”
The Red Sox did score again in the eighth when Jarren Duran hit a pinch-hit solo home run off Fernando Cruz, but the Yankees managed to hold on after Bellinger won a nine-pitch at-bat against Aroldis Chapman with an RBI double in the ninth.
“I was just trying to pass the baton,” said Bellinger, who fouled off four pitches before driving a fastball off the Green Monster. “Jazz was red-hot behind me, so I was just trying to get on base any way I could.”
After getting swept at Fenway back in June, the emboldened Yankees now have a chance to return the favor.
Doing so won’t be easy, as Garrett Crochet is scheduled to start Sunday’s series finale for the Red Sox. Rookie right-hander Will Warren will take the ball for New York.
“Hopefully we can go out and finish off a great series,” Boone said.
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