ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Whether or not Jazz Chisholm Jr. could have pulled off a double play if he had fielded the ball cleanly in the bottom of the 10th inning Saturday night remains up for debate.
So, apparently, does his knowledge of the rulebook.
While talking through his thought process on the play — with one out and the bases loaded in a tie game, he cost himself a chance at a tag-and-throw double play because of a bobble — Chisholm wondered aloud if he could have thrown to first and then tried to get the runner at second on a tag play for an inning-ending double play, admitting “I don’t know what the rule is.” Sitting at the locker next to him after the 5-4 loss, Trent Grisham informed him that the runner would have scored from third before the tag at second base, thus ending the game anyways.
On Sunday morning, manager Aaron Boone insisted that Chisholm does, in fact, know the rule
“We’ll talk through it,” Boone said before the series finale at Tropicana Field. “He’s not confused on it. I think that’s kind of the default answer when he’s got [reporters] in front of him. Look, it turns out to be a tough play. Watching it back, there might have been a chance to where if he gets it cleanly, he gets the tag off, it’s hard to know how exactly [Yandy] Diaz reacts in that moment [running from first to second]. Once it chops like that, you know it’s going to be a tough one to turn the normal 4-6-3.”
Asked directly about Chisholm saying he didn’t know the rule, Boone replied, “I think he knows the rule.”
Chisholm, who is in the minority in that he typically does not just give cliche or canned answers to reporters, has been crushed on social media for saying he did not know the rule.
“Look, I think part of it comes to answering those things in a better way,” Boone said. “You guys are around — Jazz is not a dumb guy. So it’s just sometimes how you present yourself in certain situations, coupled with he’s off to a little bit of a slow start too. Some good play changes that narrative.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
