The New York Yankees managed to hit a new rock bottom on Tuesday afternoon, collapsing late in an ugly 12-5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays that dropped them to 6-12 in their last 18 games — and cut their lead in the AL East down to just a single game. It seems like everything's been going wrong of late, and there were plenty of places for fans to place blame after this latest defeat, from an increasingly sketchy bullpen to continued misery with runners in scoring position.
But everybody seemed to want to focus on the same thing: the throwing error from Jazz Chisholm Jr. with two outs in the bottom of the fourth that wound up sparking a three-run Toronto rally that totally changed the game.
The Yankees would've been out of the innings if Jazz had made this play. Instead the Jays rallied with two outs and now it's 4-2 pic.twitter.com/ciHUNbOdVk
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) July 1, 2025
Seemingly every other day at this point, the Yankees get another reminder that Chisholm is a middle infielder by trade and belongs at second base. And yet, every day they force him to try and man the hot corner, all while watching 36-year-old DJ LeMahieu struggle to have enough range to play up the middle.
On Tuesday, it sounded like Chisholm had finally had enough.
“Everybody knows I’m a second baseman,” the infielder told Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. “Of course, I want to play second base, but whatever it takes to help the team win. If that’s what the team chooses, that’s what I gotta do. I don’t write the lineups. You feel me?
“I’m playing every day, so it’s hard to be upset. Yes, I know I’m a second baseman. Yes, I know I’m better at second base, but at the end of the day, I still have to play third. I just have to deal with it.”
Chisholm has, to this point, been the epitome of a good soldier, playing wherever the Yankees ask him to while consistently producing at the plate. The fact that he was willing to speak up and criticize Aaron Boone's lineups is a significant step — and it's hard not to think he has a point.
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Jazz Chisholm Jr. is right to feel betrayed by Yankees' baffling infield decisions
Chisholm Jr. was a middle infielder coming up with the Miami Marlins, who then moved up to center field out of necessity. And the Yankees planned on putting him at second base when they acquired him last summer, only shifting him to third because Gleyber Torres refused to budge off the keystone. This Opening Day finally gave Chisholm his chance to settle into his natural position ... that is, until DJ LeMahieu returned from the IL and bumped him once again.
The results have been predictable. Chisholm isn't a bad third baseman, but he's also not a good one; he's at -2 outs above average at the position so far this year, per Baseball Savant, and he's unable to use the athleticism and lateral agility which are his biggest assets. LeMahieu, meanwhile, has been a disaster at second base, simply not athletic enough at this point in his career to handle the position adequately.
The Yankees entered this past offseason resolved to get better defensively after their embarrassing World Series loss to the Dodgers. But as the calendar flips to July, here they are, willingly playing two negatives on their infield on a daily basis. It's a baffling development, and while Boone has to answer for it on a daily basis, it's Brian Cashman who should be taking the blame.
Brian Cashman's offseasons failure is coming back to haunt New York
By and large, Cashman did well in pivoting after losing out on the Juan Soto sweepstakes. Max Fried, Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have been as good as the team could've hoped for, and Devin Williams is starting to look like his All-Star self after an awful start. But there was one box that he left unchecked on his offseason to-do list, and it's coming back to haunt this team in a huge way right now: Why did New York not follow through on adding one more infielder?
The Yankees were connected to all sorts of candidates, from Alex Bregman to Nolan Arenado to Willi Castro to Jorge Polanco. And yet, Cashman never pulled the trigger. This was understandable at the top of the market; Bregman and Arenado had reasons to be skeptical about their fit at Yankee Stadium and how much they would cost. But not doing anything was a truly confounding decision: Everyone knew that the Yankees were a third baseman short, because everyone had watched LeMahieu struggle in 2024.
The fact that Torres is mashing with the Detroit Tigers just rubs salt in the wound. But even if New York had washed its hands of that relationship, even if Torres' unwillingness to move off second made him a less than ideal fit, that's no excuse not to pivot elsewhere. And now the Yankees are more or less forced to choose between two bad options: LeMahieu has to play somewhere, and that's the real failure in all of this.