BOSTON — Jazz Chisholm Jr. didn’t just make a statement after the game, when the ultra-confident second baseman again called the Yankees “the best team in the league.”
He also did so on the field, with his third straight multi-hit game in a 5-3 win over the Red Sox on Saturday at Fenway Park.
Among his three hits was his 29th homer of the season, leaving him one home run away from his first 30-30 season, since he already has 30 stolen bases.
“All I want to do is help the team win and I felt like I did that today,’’ Chisholm said.
He’s done it a lot since arriving from the Marlins prior to last year’s trade deadline.
Saturday was Chisholm’s 162nd game as a Yankee and in that span, he has 40 homers to go along with 48 stolen bases.
According to stat guru Katie Sharp, Chisholm is just the sixth Yankee to hit 40 home runs in his first 162 games with the team, joining Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Jason Giambi, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth.
“It’s really impressive,’’ Aaron Boone said of Chisholm closing in on the 30-30 milestone, noting that Chisholm would have even better numbers if he had been healthy all season.
In his first full year as a Yankee, Chisholm has dealt with an oblique strain, as well as nagging injuries to his foot and groin that robbed him of even better numbers.
The oblique issue cost him all of May and then attempted just two stolen bases between June 11 and July 29. He was caught both times.
All in all, Chisholm was sidelined for 28 games and also went 39 games without swiping a base.
But when he’s on, Chisholm is as dynamic a player as the Yankees have had in quite some time.
And it’s left him on the verge of the team’s first 30-30 season since Alfonso Soriano did it in back-to-back seasons in 2002 and ‘03.
“He missed a month and then a month when he came back, he was still dealing with the foot, so wasn’t stealing,” Boone said of Chisholm’s fear. “That’s almost two months of play when he wasn’t stealing bases and a month he wasn’t in the lineup.”
Chisholm has delivered what the Yankees hoped for when they got him from the Marlins, when they expected him to play second base, with Gleyber Torres shifting from second to third.
But when Torres was unwilling to move to third as he approached free agency, Chisholm agreed to go to third, a position he was largely unfamiliar with.
The results there were mixed, as they were when he had to play there again for much of the early part of this year because DJ LeMahieu didn’t feel comfortable physically with being at third.
Now Chisholm is back where he belongs and he’s been stellar on both sides of the plate.
Much of it was on display Saturday, as Chisholm’s squib single drove in a run in the top of the first and then poked another run-scoring single through the left side of the infield to score Aaron Judge in the third.
Chisholm’s shot out to right- again off of Boston right-hander Brayan Bello- with two outs in the top of the fifth, gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead.
It was also Chisholm’s third straight multi-hit game and he has five RBIs during that stretch, as well as a 1.066 OPS in 11 games against Boston this year.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
