Benched in Game 1 of this Wild Card Series, Jazz Chisholm Jr. showed the Red Sox just how lucky they were for his manager’s blunder — and returned just in time Wednesday night to save the Yankees’ season.
Chisholm’s diving defensive gem prevented the go-ahead run from scoring in the seventh inning, then he later used his legs for the winning run, hustling around from first base on Austin Wells’ two-out single in the eighth to deliver the Yankees’ 4-3 victory in Game 2 and force a winner-take-all Game 3 Thursday night.
The Yankees will now try to become the first team to rally back from a Game 1 loss to win a Wild Card Series since the expanded playoff system was implemented in 2022. Those teams have gone 0-12. Overall, counting the 2020 COVID-19 season, teams that win Game 1 were 18-2 in those series.
On Wednesday night, there were some audible boos when Aaron Boone’s name came up during the pregame introductions, no doubt some leftover angst from the manager’s string of questionable decisions that contributed to Tuesday night’s Game 1 loss. And that definitely put Boone under microscopic scrutiny in the do-or-die Game 2 as Carlos Rodon navigated his way into the later innings.
The previous night, Boone yanked Max Fried after 102 pitches, then immediately got burned by his bullpen choices. This time, after Rodon teed up a tying homer to Trevor Story leading off the sixth and followed with a walk to Alex Bregman, it was Boone who trotted out for a temperature check — not pitching coach Matt Blake.
But rather than take the baseball, Boone stuck with Rodon, who got cleanup hitter Romy Gonzalez on an infield pop-up before an inning-ending double play kept the score knotted at 3. Boone even sent Rodon back out for the seventh, which didn’t look all that smart once he issued a leadoff walk and then drilled Jarren Duran on the shoulder with his 91st pitch, ending Rodon’s night (6+ IP, 4 H, 3 R).
Luckily for Boone, his bullpen bailed him out this time, helped by some rare Sox ineptitude — and a run-saving stab by Chisholm. The Boston gaffe was a sac-bunt pop-up for the first out. But, with the go-ahead run at second base, Chisholm made a brilliant diving stop to keep pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida’s grounder from reaching the outfield. Still, the Sox had to be kicking themselves that Nate Eaton didn’t score when Chisholm fired a desperate one-hop throw to first and Ben Rice fumbled it.
Rice didn’t put on the same annoyed act in the wake of Tuesday night’s loss as Chisholm, who conducted an interview at his locker with his back facing reporters while speaking in clipped tones. But Rice had every right to be as irritated as the Yankees’ 30-30 second baseman — if not the same seniority to display it — for riding the bench during the Game 1 matchup against Cy Young favorite Garrett Crochet.
Boone did the Red Sox a favor with Tuesday’s Crochet-adjusted lineup, and if there were any remaining doubt, it didn’t take very long for Rice to drive that point home in Game 2. In the first inning, after Cody Bellinger’s two-out single, Rice blasted a first-pitch cutter from Sox starter Brayan Bello into the rightfield seats.
Rice grew up in Cohasset, Mass., about a 45-minute drive south from Fenway Park, but did so as a Yankees’ fan living behind enemy lines. Last season, Rice tormented his hometown Sox with a three-homer game in the Bronx, the first Yankees’ rookie ever to accomplish the feat.
So it only figured that Rice’s first playoff game against the Red Sox would carry special meaning, too. Not only did he provide the instant 2-0 lead, he became the first Yankee to homer in his first postseason at-bat since Shane Spencer in Game 2 of the 1998 Division Series. In short order, Rice already has become a local lightning rod for this ancient rivalry, especially as a New England turncoat succeeding in the Bronx.
The day after Boone was lambasted for everything from his lineup choices to bullpen usage in the Game 1 loss, the manager restored a sense of normalcy by reverting back to the tried-and-true strategy of starting his best players. That didn’t happen in Tuesday’s opener, when the Yankees were guilty of over-thinking against Crochet and their righty-platoon options were not only inadequate, but led to more missteps in the later innings.
Depending on how this series plays out, Boone’s decision — let’s say in collaboration with the front office — to sit two of the Yankees’ most dangerous offensive players for a best-of-three showdown with the Red Sox has the potential to haunt him for quite a while. It certainly wasn’t received well by Chisholm, and when Boone was asked the following afternoon if the matter was addressed with Chisholm, it remained unclear if any of the lingering issues were resolved.
“Every player is not going to agree with every decision that I make,” Boone said. “He is a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve . . . but I don’t need him to put a happy face on. I need him to go out and play his butt off for us tonight. That’s what I expect to happen.”
On Wednesday night, it turned out to be one of the few times that Boone made the right call in this series.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball’s Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
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