CHICAGO — Jazz Chisholm who helped dig the hole climbed out of it and pulled the Yankees with him. For a loud slice of the fan base, only the hole seemed to matter.
The Yankees rallied past the White Sox 9-5 on Monday at Rate Field, erasing an early three-run deficit to win the series opener. It was their kind of night, ragged, tense and ultimately a comeback.
The rally leaned heavily on one player. Chisholm turned a rough start into a strong finish and touched nearly every part of the offense that mattered.
Yet the reaction online told a different story. Many fans skipped the recovery and kept circling back to a single first-inning misplay.
The player at the center of both the mistake and the comeback was the same Chisholm.
A rough first inning turns into a big night
Jazz Chisholm Jr. set the tone in the worst way early. In the first inning, with the score still 0-0, Randal Grichuk tried to stretch a leadoff single into a double, and Chisholm could not handle the relay, dropping the ball before applying the tag. Grichuk was safe when he should have been out.
The White Sox pounced. Chicago turned the reprieve into a three-run first against Max Fried, capped by Braden Montgomery’s two-out triple, and the Yankees trailed 3-0 before they had settled in.
Chisholm did not let the misplay define his night. He tied the game in the fourth with a two-run double off Chris Murphy, then stole third and scored on a groundout. He later added a bunt single and another steal, his 29th of the season, and finished 2-for-4 with two RBIs, two runs and two steals from the six spot for the Yankees.
The performance nudged Chisholm’s season line to .226/.299/.414 with 45 RBIs and 29 steals through 99 games. The 29 steals rank third in the majors and leave him one shy of a third straight 30-steal season. The batting average has frustrated fans all year, but the power and the speed have made him one of the few dynamic pieces in a lineup stripped of its stars.
Chisholm points to a team that will not quit
The comeback fit a season-long pattern for a lineup missing much of its power. Chisholm framed the night as evidence of that resolve, speaking after a game the Yankees had no business winning cleanly.
“It just shows,” Chisholm said, “that we’re never going to give up.”
Manager Aaron Boone acknowledged the sloppiness while praising the fight, reaching back to the 1983 White Sox and their winning-ugly reputation to describe the night.
“We’ve got to play cleaner than that, but it was a really gritty effort by a lot of different people in that room,” Boone said.
The win was the Yankees’ 27th comeback of the season, the most in the American League, according to analyst Katie Sharp. It was the kind of resilience the team has needed while playing without Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and, now, Cody Bellinger.
Chisholm was far from the only culprit
The focus on Chisholm ignored how widely the sloppiness was shared. The Yankees committed two errors on a night Boone openly called messy.
The Yankees nearly let a routine finish become unnecessarily tense in the ninth inning. Holding a 9-4 lead with Camilo Doval on the mound, Jose Caballero misplayed Sam Antonacci’s grounder at third base. The error allowed Chicago to put a runner aboard with one out. Munetaka Murakami then drew a walk before Doval retired Miguel Vargas for the second out.
Anthony Volpe followed with an even costlier mistake. Colson Montgomery sent a manageable popup into shallow center field, but Volpe failed to secure it. Antonacci scored, Murakami moved to third and Montgomery reached safely. Jasson Dominguez and Trent Grisham also had time to take charge of the play, but neither appeared to call Volpe off.
The error trimmed New York’s advantage to 9-5 and forced Aaron Boone to summon David Bednar. Bednar ended the threat by striking out Chase Meidroth, preserving the Yankees’ victory despite the sloppy defensive finish.
Volpe, notably, also made one of the best plays of the game. His sharp relay in the seventh cut down Colson Montgomery at the plate to snuff a White Sox threat, the same glove that faltered late saving a run earlier.
The backlash lands on a $10.2 million lightning rod
The volume of the criticism owed something to the name on the jersey. Chisholm signed a one-year, $10.2 million contract in January, and every misstep from a player at that price tends to draw a crowd. The first-inning drop, coming in a scoreless game, gave his detractors an early opening.
The reaction on social media was swift and pointed. Some argued Chisholm, not the error-prone infield around him, was the real problem, and a few called on the Yankees to move on from him.
“Jazz is a bigger problem than Volpe. Jazz has got to go,” one fan, Frank Rukaj, wrote on X.
Others tied the play to the Yankees’ sloppy defense as a whole, invoking the franchise’s exacting standards under late owner George Steinbrenner.
“I miss George. He wouldn’t tolerate this atrocious all around defense,” wrote a fan posting as Michael Duncanson.
The harshest takes questioned Chisholm’s effort and floated a trade, a striking reaction to a night in which he produced two hits, two RBIs, two runs and two steals.
“Wouldn’t be the slightest bit upset if Jazz were traded. Over all of it,” wrote a fan under the handle Cameron Vasta.
A gritty win the standings will remember
The result mattered more than the manner. It was Chisholm who most embodied the night, the player who stumbled first and produced most. His aggressive, high-risk style invites scrutiny, and a slick misplay in the opening inning handed his critics an easy target.
The win lifted the Yankees to 60-46, keeping them in the thick of the American League East race. They send Gerrit Cole to the mound Tuesday against the White Sox, still hunting bullpen and catching help before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
For Chisholm, the numbers told one story and the reaction another. He answered an early mistake with the kind of two-way night that decides games, and the Yankees will take that trade every time, whatever the crowd chooses to remember.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
