Jazz Chisholm's time with the Yankees looks like it's over | Pinstripe Post

Back with part three of our continuing series where we're going position by position for the Yankees and asking and discussing and maybe giving some thoughts on what they should do at each of those positions this offseason. We've already done catcher and first base. I hope you've been watching them or reading them in a hard copy of the Post or at nypost.com, the sports page under my byline. Today we're up to second base. I think we have to deal first with the Jazz Chisholm of it all. He is going to be a free agent this offseason as soon as the World Series ends. The players who could be free agents are free agents. The Chisholm experience for two and a half years is he's an incredibly talented player. He could do the spectacular, but he also could fiddle with his uh running glove and get picked off he could wander around on defense and not play technically well uh you know he was there was some Stephon Marbury to his game uh you could do look in at the at the box score and you'd see 22 points and 11 assists and be like but did it help a team win today and uh i think you could ask those questions about Jazz uh was he part of the kind of an overall psyche that uh i think undermines the Yankees at this time of year uh where they do not play technically well and it bites them and they get eliminated uh i think for a variety of reasons including that but not to be ignored that we're probably going to be dealing with tougher financial rules uh coming up uh moving forward in a new collective bargaining and group agreement up to and maybe including a salary cap uh i don't think the Yankees are going to put the 23.15 million uh qualifying offer on Jazz uh the compensation if he turns it down as a draft pick after the fourth round i don't think they're going to risk that he would take it that he feels that his market won't be great because maybe the word is out on the kind of overall player he is he still is 29 if somebody saw the talent and gave him a big contract i wouldn't be surprised. He's talented. He's bright. I think he's a good guy. I think that there's things in the cracks that make him a somewhat problematic player. I think the Yankees are going to move on and not risk the possibility that like Trent Grisham last year, he takes the qualifying offer. So that leads to the question of what do they do right now? If I think the season began, Anthony Volpe would be their second baseman. And if I were guessing, I think Anthony Volpe is going to be their second baseman. Why do I think that? I think that they did two things last year that were important in the tough love department and that they hadn't done previously. Number one, they moved him off a shortstop. This was one of those places where I thought the Yankees lived in a level of unreality where they would keep telling us the player was well above an average shortstop. In Aaron Boone's estimation one time, he's elite uh that was the word he used uh to me a guy who has his arm which is not a shortstop's arm and is on the ground sliding around on his knees etc to to kind of protect the ball from getting by him that's not a major league shortstop uh that was number one they took him off the position the second thing is they sent him down to the minor leagues uh they told him the scholarship portion of the program is over uh and uh that was some tough love there and i thought he came back a better player. Now, we have seen spurts of Anthony Volpe being a very, very, very good player for weeks at a time. The problem is when he goes bad, he goes really horrendously bad for significant periods of time. I call them offensive death spirals. Among players who've had 2,000 at bats that is a Yankee, he has an 83 OPS plus. It's the seventh worst in the history of the franchise for that many plate appearances. Now, I will say I made a list of this. Players who were worse than him in that category include Bucky Dent, Bobby Richardson, Jerry Coleman, and Frank Cuscati. Those were all championship, and in many cases, multiple championship infielders for the Yankees. So I know that a player could do that and be part of a whole if they're doing other things well. And I will point out that over time, Anthony Volpe has had a season where he had 21 homers. He's had a season with 29 steals. He's had a season with 55 extra base hits. He just had a season where he walked a career best 10.2% of the time. He just had a season where he drew, believe it or not, he was the best on the team at this, drove in nine of the ten runners with less than two outs from third base. To me, what everyone has to get out of their mind, starting with Anthony Volpe, the organization, the fan base, everyone is, hey, there goes a first-round draft choice. There goes the kid who grew up in New Jersey, a Jeter fan. And there goes a guy who is literally a top 10 in all of baseball prospect. I think that player is never showing up. The question is, can a player like Caleb Durbin show up? You know, I use Durbin, not a very big, imposing, physical guy like Volpe. But he produces a lot in a lot of areas. A little power, speed, defense, and his head is in the game every day. It's gritty. I would believe in that player more if Anthony Volpe was outside New York. I do think that playing here where he wanted to work so badly and the fan base is already on him puts a level of pressure on him where I wonder if it will succeed. If he were playing second base, for example, next to Bobby Witt Jr. or Kevin McGonigal in Detroit, I think I could see that working much better. But again, I think this is the way the Yankees are going to go in part because they have not given up on Volpe. And again, they're going to have to watch every dollar if we're heading towards a more strict payroll situation. So what does that mean? The two sexy second basemen who will be on the free agent market are Brandon Laux, who's a lefty power hitter, and Luis Rios, who's a lefty contact hitter. I think that the Yankees, I think a lot of teams don't really believe in the underlying defensive stuff improvement on Rios this year. They think it was better, but they still don't think he was a great second baseman. He's going to have to get a multiple-year contract, a lot of money. Laux is a power hitter. You could argue he just had his best season after getting traded from Tampa Bay to Pittsburgh. But he's had some chronic back stuff. Again, a multi-year contract, a good amount of money. I think if the Yankees were going to trade for C.J. Abrams to play second base, they would have done that at the deadline when they were dealing with the Nationals instead of getting Luis Garcia Jr. from the Nationals, so I don't think it's him. If I were thinking about players, if it wasn't Volpe, I'll throw out some thoughts. Again, I know how our aggregator friends work. I am just suggesting things. I'm not saying I heard anything. The one I will say is I know the Yankees over the years have greatly liked the Miami switch hitter Xavier Edwards who kind of would fit in right at second base and lead off and I think that would be a great help but he would cost a significant amount and I assume part of that amount would be Volpe being part of that whatever package they would send to Miami for Edwards but I like the switch hitter with speed who you know limit strikeouts etc but we'll see. I'm going to throw out a name that I think is interesting, Sam Adonaci who played left field this year not very well. He's really a second baseman, but the White Sox have chased Mayo, McGrath but the White Sox are now also after making the playoffs this year in a cycle of trying to win. They desperately need starting pitching now is Adonaci for Elmer Rodriguez, something like that in that world, a possibility I think you make a call. I think a player the Yankees have liked in the past. Michael Massey of the Royals, another left-hand hitter. If he's going to work in complement, maybe with someone like Volpe, because like Volpe, Massey can play pretty much some outfield, plays across the infield a little bit, hits righty pitching. The Royals desperately need right-hand hitting outfield help. They needed it this year. They still need it. Jason Dominguez, Elio Ramos, those kind of players, does that get you towards Michael Massey? I do think part of the plan for 2027, if Luis Garcia Jr. is not traded, is they're going to tell him, please work on conditioning, agility. He was a second baseman for his whole career until last year when he went to first base. Did that liberate him to have his big offensive season and you don't want to mess with it? Maybe, but the Yankees structurally would work better if Garcia is on the roster and Stanton is on the roster and Ben Rice is on the roster and Aaron Judge is on there. As everyone's on the roster who kind of ended the year and is healthy and active, it would help if Garcia can go play second base for 20, 30, 40 games just to give the ability against particularly a tough righty for everyone to get in the lineup in some way. And Jose Caballero remains here and a valuable chess piece to move around the board, including at second base. but if I were uh suspecting where the Yankees are thinking of going I think this is Anthony Volpe's job to lose uh and that maybe they'll look for that left-handed compliment but I don't think they're looking to replace him