With a dozen teams in the postseason, it’s easy to find flaws in just about all of them, so the Yankees figure to be in pretty good shape as the top seed in the American League and having the third-best record in the majors behind the Dodgers and Phillies.
But as one AL scout said recently, “They’ve got a lot of guys playing where they don’t belong.”
And that was before Anthony Rizzo went down with two fractured fingers in his right hand on the penultimate day of the regular season, likely knocking the first baseman out of the ALDS.
Ben Rice fields grounders during a practice at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 1, 2024.
Asked about the possibility of playing in the postseason with an inexperienced player at first, like Ben Rice or Oswaldo Cabrera, Jazz Chisholm Jr. sounded optimistic.
“I’ll still approach [defense] the same way and try to make every play,” Chisholm said Wednesday on a Zoom call from the Stadium. “I trust my guys to help me out if I need help.”
No one on the current roster, though, is as smooth and capable of scooping bounced throws out of the dirt at first than Rizzo, which he displayed often after he returned from a fractured arm on Sept. 1 after Rice, Cabrera and DJ LeMahieu — still nursing a right hip impingement — filled in.
“I trust [Cabrera] over there, 100 percent,’’ Chisholm said. “He’s a shortstop. That’s how I feel when I look at Rizzo playing first base: He looks like a shortstop playing first base. And Ben is gonna be alright. He’s a catcher. … First base would be great to have Rizzo, but we have guys that can handle it.”
The Yankees are counting on that at several spots besides first base — whether it’s potentially trusting Jasson Dominguez in left field, where he struggled after being called up in September, and even Chisholm, who has a minus-2 Defensive Runs Scored rating, according to Fangraphs — 25th out of 39 third basemen who have played 400 innings this season.
And that’s on top of the fact that Aaron Judge would be better served in right field than in center, where he ranks as the third-worst fielder among those qualified.
Jazz Chisholm fields ground ball during a Yankees practice on Oct. 1, 2024.
And Juan Soto was primarily a left fielder until he arrived in The Bronx and was moved to right field to avoid the spacious dimensions in left at the Stadium.
None of that stopped the Yankees from holding off Cleveland for the No. 1 seed in the AL, and for the most part their bats made up for any deficiencies on defense.
That includes Chisholm, in particular.
Since his arrival July 28 from Miami, Chisholm had the 14th-best WAR in the majors, according to Fangraphs, and only Judge was higher on the Yankees.
His speed and power, and lefty bat, will be a key to the Yankees success in the playoffs.
And the team hopes his glove doesn’t hurt.
