WASHINGTON, D.C. — Jazz Chisholm Jr. thought he had gotten under it again. He had spent a week hitting balls hard at fielders, and when he lifted a 1-1 sweeper from Matt Krook toward right field Friday night, he assumed it was another out.
It landed in the second deck.
The two-run homer, struck with one out in the ninth inning at Nationals Park, turned a 3-2 deficit into a lead the Yankees would not surrender. Austin Wells followed with another homer. The Yankees won 5-3, their second straight comeback and third win in five games.
For a 27-year-old having what he calls a terrible season, the timing could hardly have been better. Not for the game. For his future.
A walk year gone sideways
Chisholm is playing on a one-year, $10.2 million contract, his final trip through arbitration before free agency next winter. He nearly doubled his 2025 salary to get it, a reward for a 30-homer, 30-steal season that ranked among the best of his career.
This year has not followed. He carried a .221 average and 12 home runs into the weekend, numbers that fall well short of the platform a Yankees player wants in his contract year. He has not hidden from it.
In a conversation earlier in the week, Chisholm assessed his own production with a bluntness few players offer about themselves in a walk year.
“Have you seen my at-bats? I’ve been terrible,” Chisholm said.
He went further, measuring this season against a breakout he insists he can top.
“I know this year is pretty bad,” Chisholm said.
The Yankees have shown little urgency to extend him. Chisholm said last year he was open to talks, and rival clubs have inquired, but no significant traction has emerged. General manager Brian Cashman has described the club’s approach to such situations as letting them play out.
What Boone said, and why it read like a pitch
Chisholm’s ninth-inning swing gave his manager an opening, and Aaron Boone took it. Asked about the second baseman afterward, Boone did not settle for praising one home run. He framed Chisholm as a player still short of his ceiling, and pointed him toward the months that matter most.
“He’s such a dynamic player,” Boone said.
Boone acknowledged the rough April that opened the season, then made a distinction that doubled as an endorsement. Fine was not the standard he holds Chisholm to.
“Jazz shouldn’t be fine. He’s better than that,” Boone said.
The manager closed with a nod to the calendar. A strong finish, he suggested, is still available, and the Yankees would benefit from it as much as Chisholm would.
“Hopefully he’s setting himself up for a really good second half,” Boone said.
It was not a Yankees contract statement. But in a season when Chisholm’s price has slipped, a public vote of confidence from the man who writes his name in the lineup carried weight beyond the box score.
Leadership that arrived before the bat did
The homer was not the only reason Chisholm’s stock with the Yankees moved this week. A night earlier, before a 12-4 rout of Tampa Bay, he stood up in the Yankees hitters meeting and told a slumping room to wake up.
The Yankees had lost 15 of 20 and scored the fewest runs in baseball since June 18. Chisholm set aside the scouting report and spoke plainly, according to teammate Max Schuemann, who relayed the message afterward.
“Enough is enough, we’re better than this,” Chisholm said, per Schuemann.
The lineup responded with 14 hits the next afternoon. Schuemann credited the words with changing the room.
“I feel like it really brought the guys together,” Schuemann said.
Chisholm tied the moment to a belief about how the Yankees win, connecting the clubhouse to the field after Friday’s comeback.
“When we are together, we’re unstoppable,” Chisholm said.
Where the numbers and the market stand
Chisholm hit his 13th home run Friday and drove in the runs that flipped the game. He remains a career .251 hitter against right-handers, the split Washington tried and failed to exploit by summoning a lefty in the ninth.
His value has never rested on average alone. He offers power, speed and defense at a premium position, the profile that produced a 30-30 season a year ago and made him a two-time All-Star in a Yankees uniform. That blend is why projections for his next deal have run high. One analyst predicted a 10-year contract worth $300 million, while an earlier report placed his target nearer seven years and $180 million.
Whether this season raises or lowers that number is the question hanging over his final months in arbitration. Chisholm has been consistent about where he wants to play, saying repeatedly that he wants to stay in New York and that free agency is not on his mind.
The Yankees have not signaled they intend to trade him, and no move appears imminent. The likeliest outcome remains that he finishes the Yankees season in pinstripes, then tests a market that his own performance will help set.
A finish that will decide the price
New York is four games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East and pointed toward the All-Star break. The Yankees continue their series in Washington on Saturday, with Cam Schlittler facing Miles Mikolas.
Chisholm has given the second half a template in the span of two nights, a speech that moved a room and a homer that moved a game. The Yankees manager has made clear he expects more, and framed the expectation as opportunity rather than pressure.
The Yankees contract will be decided later, by a market and a front office that has kept its distance. For now, the case for keeping Chisholm is being made in real time, one late swing at a time, with the man himself insisting the worst of his season is behind him.
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