Unsmooth Jazz
A Troubling Start
It’s hard to imagine a worse start to one’s free agency platform year than Jazz Chisholm, Jr’s has been to start 2026. As of Monday afternoon, the Yankees’ second baseman is hitting just .207/.288/.331, good for a .283 wOBA and a 77 wRC+. To put an unsightly bow on it, he’s been surpassed in performance by his teammate, Ryan McMahon, who got off to a start that could be generously described as horrendous. There are some silver linings in the constant cloud of 2026 for Jazz.
For one, he’s fielding the ball beautifully, racking up 4 Outs Above Average already per StatCast, which is good for a 95th percentile ranking. Similarly, the Def. measure over at FanGraphs has Jazz in the top 15-ish (give or take some places for ties) in the American League. He has a similar rank in FG’s baserunning measure and is fifth in the American League with 11 steals. So he’s still running well and still defending well. His bat just isn’t there yet, but it’s not for lack of trying.
For many left handed batters, the key to being successful in Yankee Stadium is to pull the ball in the air. This is also something that is generally true for any handedness in any park, but especially so for Yankees at YS3. Regardless, adding power—specifically homers—is something intentional on Jazz’s part. In 2024, he set a new career high with 24 homers, then broke it last year with 31, part of his 30/30 season. Jazz mused about going 50/50 this year and I think we can safely say the former part of that won’t happen and even reaching 31 again seems like a longshot, given where he is right now. With that bit of preamble out of the way, Jazz’s process for adding power to the pull side is there. He’s pulling the ball at the highest rate of his career and pulling the ball in the air at a decent rate, too. He is, however, possibly running into the same problem Ryan McMahon may be running into as I detailed last week. The ball is getting into the air, but it’s not getting into the air with authority.
Aside from the fact that everything related to hitting on Jazz’s StatCast overview is blue (except for chase rate and bat speed), he’s getting under the most pitches in his career (38%) by far. His 5.0% solid contact rate is the second lowest of his career. His barrel percentage is the lowest of his career. So while Jazz is putting the ball in play to the right side of the field (literally and figuratively), there isn’t a enough authority behind his batted balls to make them productive. One issue could be that Jazz has fallen behind on hitting fastballs.
So far this season, he is at -1.2 runs per 100 fastballs, the second worst mark of his career (2020, his first year in the league). He’s also sporting a 39.6 ground ball rate against fastballs, much higher than his overall mark and a big jump up from last year’s number (32.4). Let’s also take a look at Jazz’s spraychart against fastballs:
Look at the area between the right field line and right center field. There isn’t much there. It would appear that based on the aforementioned numbers and the chart above that when it comes to fastballs, Jazz is not pulling the ball in the air enough.
It’s unlikely that this problem remains through the whole season for two reasons. One, Jazz is just a good player and will eventually go on some sort of run. Two, I wrote about almost the exact same thing almost exactly a year ago and we all know how 2025 turned out for Jazz. Hopefully, 2026 is more of the same in that way.