Jazz Chisholm Jr. turned a strange superstition into his best night of the season Friday, going 3-for-4 with a double, a run and three RBIs as the Yankees beat the Mets 5-2 at Citi Field.
He reached base four times, stole a base and drove in three of New York’s five runs before ending the game by getting picked off at first. It was only the second time this season Chisholm had reached safely four times, and it came after he borrowed Giancarlo Stanton’s baggy pants because he could not find Trent Grisham’s pair.
The result mattered because Chisholm entered the game in a deep slump, hitting.203 with a.607 OPS through 43 games. He had gone 0-for-4 with three strikeouts Monday in Baltimore, then sat out Tuesday against Orioles left-hander Trevor Rogers. On Wednesday, back in Grisham’s pants, he had the Yankees’ only hit, a double.
That odd run has started to take on a life of its own. Chisholm had worn Grisham’s baggy pants earlier this season in Houston and went 5-for-12 across three games, and on Friday he sounded half-joking, half-convinced that the wardrobe switch is helping. “It’s something about the baggy pants,” he said. “We marked those No. 13,” and added, “They ain’t his pants no more.”
The Yankees needed someone to carry the offense again, and Chisholm answered after a game in which they collected 10 hits, a sharp rebound from being one-hit Wednesday. Cam Schlittler, coming off his own 6 ²/₃-inning one-run outing against the Mets, put it plainly: “Jazz is the guy.”
Chisholm was careful not to overstate the formula behind the surge. “I’m just going to keep the same mindset of trying to go out there and win and not worry about what I’m doing,” he said, then added that he would “just keep on trying to go help the team and win the game.”
The pants story may be the hook, but the larger sign for the Yankees is that Chisholm finally looked like a middle-of-the-order threat instead of a struggling hitter trying to survive April. If that version holds, the outfit will be a footnote. If it does not, the jokes about No. 13 will not last nearly as long as the slump did.
