Category: Sports News

Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said at spring training he had a "gut feeling" he was on the precipice of an amazing year. 

After going hitless in four at-bats with three strikeouts in Thursday's 1-0 loss to the Seattle Mariners, Chisholm's slash line dipped to .216/.296/.391 on the year for a .687 OPS, down .126 points from his mark a season ago. And that gut feeling has become a season-long stomachache as things have been particularly bad of late: He has just five hits in his last 36 at-bats (.139) over his last 11 games with 16 strikeouts.

Asked after Thursday's loss why he thought it has been a struggle for Chisholm offensively, manager Aaron Boone said, “Don’t know.”

After a long pause of nearly 10 seconds, the skipper attempted to give a better answer for the second baseman’s struggles: “Missing his pitch a fair amount. Some of the balls that he’s hit well have kinda been that one-hopper to second base when maybe he gets a good pitch to drive and do something with. That’s the subtlety of this game and baseball. You gotta make hay when you get your pitches.”

Entering Thursday's game, Chisholm has seen his xwOBA dip from .346 to .289 (13th percentile), expected slugging drop from .481 to .364 (23rd percentile), and his barrel percentage go from 15 percent (91st percentile) to nine percent (56th percentile).

“Because I feel like overall, he’s making fairly good swing decisions,” Boone continued. “He’s not chasing; there’s patience in there. But probably whether it’s just missing, maybe a foul off, maybe swinging through more pitches than he’s used to. Again, just hasn’t gone on that hot streak really at any point.”

To that end, Chisholm's chase rate has ticked up a hair, but not changed relative to his position in the league, and his whiff rate has actually gone down, but that is of no comfort in the midst of a slump.

“Missing fastballs down the middle. Missing sliders down the middle. I can’t tell you why,” Chisholm said after the game, via The New York Post. “Or else I would be hitting.”  

Boone also pointed to the slow start Chisholm went through – 22-for-109 (.202) with 35 strikeouts and a .611 OPS in his first 30 games – but mentioned he has had some clutch moments during the year.

“He’s had some big hits for us but hasn’t gone on that long stretch where he’s really capable of impacting the game in a big way,” the manager said.

In spring training, Chisholm publicly stated some very lofty expectations for himself: 50 home runs and 50 steals. Through 112 games, he has 17 home runs and 31 stolen bases on 38 attempts.

Is it a matter of failing to meet that high bar that has weighed on him?

“Well, I don’t know, he expects to be great, but that’s part of this game,” Boone said. “You gotta handle that. And, look, different guys say different things publicly. [But] they’re just that. It’s a grind of a season for everyone involved, and you gotta be able to handle all the things, and he is.

“But he certainly hasn’t found that stretch of play that he’s done with us the last couple years that he’s accustomed to and that he expects.”

With 41 games left in the regular season and the postseason looming, a few clutch hits could be enough to wash out the bad taste of a grinding season.

“Forty-one good games can turn a season around. And that’s what I’m planning on doing,” Chisholm said. "I feel like mentally, I’m not defeated. So if I was mentally defeated, I think it would have been a different story in my eyes, but I’m not. I feel like I’m still as good as I am.”

Logan Gilbert tossed six scoreless innings and the bullpen stepped up behind him to snap the Mariners six-game losing streak with a 1-0 win against the Yankees.

We’ve reached the part of the season where I’m mostly watching for the love of baseball. I think we all know by now this whole “2026 Mariners” thing probably isn’t going to work out. Maybe it’s the great Dan Wilson conspiracy. Maybe it’s the bad hitting, pitching, fielding and base running. Maybe it’s a nuanced third thing. I don’t really care anymore, which I guess is kind of the point.

One thing I love about following a team from Pacific Time is the occasional morning baseball game. When I was in elementary school the Mariners played a game in Boston that started very early (I think it was this game). I remember pestering the bus driver until she agreed to put it on the radio for the 30 minutes or so it took to get to school. It’s a small example of how baseball — even awful baseball — tends to sneak itself into the background of life and help breakup the monotony of the week.

So rather than recap this baseball game, let’s just recap my morning, with baseball.

I woke up at 9:30 or so. Well, actually I woke up on the couch at about 6:30 when my wife began her morning routine. I’ve been tremendously sick this week, with some sort of upper respiratory infection that, perhaps coincidentally, began after spending too much time in Spokane’s wild fire smoke this weekend. I’ve been sleeping long, weird hours, trying not to let my incessant hacking and sniffling disturb the flow of our household. After moving to bed and getting another three hours of sleep, I woke up feeling pretty good for the first time in several days. This is one of the great natural highs of life, to find yourself on the other side of sickness. It was a good day from the start.

With only a few moderate coughs, I got ready myself, then fed the animals and took the dog out, making sure to go far enough down the sidewalk to space out her toxic piss from last night’s relief. We live in a long line of identical town houses, but ours is identifiable by the patch of dead grass out front. Whoops.

Back indoors I quickly realized we’re out of coffee beans and added “walk to coffee shop” to my list of morning ablutions. But first, the game preview. Yes, in sickness and in health, the show must go on here at Lookout Landing, so I quickly wrote a few paragraphs that nobody read (me neither) to preview Thursday’s affair. Once that was published, I turned my attention to my actual work-from-home job, sending emails, updating spreadsheets, loading data, and filling myself in on the last few days. The game started in the background at about 10:35. Not long after, I saw a camera flip and zoom in on the left field wall, revealing Weston Wilson had snuck a solo homer over the fence against the excellent Max Fried. That’s baseball, I guess.

It was close enough to noon after the bottom of the fourth that I decided to go get that coffee. I doused myself in sunscreen, leashed up the dog, and set out for the trail. Our dog, Arrow, is a German Shorthaired Pointer, which means she has a sort of manic energy that keeps the leash taut. She’s also eight-plus with fairly severe arthritis, so she generally slows down after about five minutes, preferring to roll in the grass than move forward. That’s OK, as Gameday implied there was little reason to rush back. It was actually the first beautiful day in Spokane in weeks, with the smoke from our wildfires having moved on to pester other regions (sorry). The trail was packed, with plenty of Spokanites taking advantage of what’s likely a brief window of blue sky. It was nice to see the familiar faces (and snouts) of the neighborhood again. I got a 16 oz iced Americano and finished it by the time I’d returned for the seventh.

The score was still 1-0, back at my desk. Logan Gilbert was no longer on the mound, having been removed after six scoreless innings. I can’t claim to have seen much of it, but the stats imply he was sharp. His velocity was up, and he got 15 whiffs, seven strikeouts, and a ton of weak contact. The Mariners pitching has been really bad of late, with the starters struggling to work deep into games (especially on the road) and the bullpen shallow behind them. While the lineup and Dan Wilson will steal most of the post-mortem for the season, the second-half cratering from the pitching staff is why the Mariners are no longer even mediocre. Gilbert offered a nice change of pace.

Eduard Bazardo was on the mound in the seventh. He got two quick outs, then made things interesting by walking consecutive batters. After working Amed Rosario 0-2 on four straight pitches right down the middle, he threw a fifth pitch up-and-away that Rosario took for a ball. Jhonny Pereda challenged and ABS confirmed it had just nicked the zone for strike three. It was Pereda’s fourth correct challenge of the game, and his third challenge resulting in a strikeout. There haven’t been a lot of bright spots for the Mariners this year, but it’s been a joy to watch Pereda exhibit competence as a backup catcher, especially on defense.

And then suddenly, Aaron Goldsmith was announcing “no wiggle room” for Andrés Muñoz heading into the bottom of the ninth with a 1-0 lead. I figured I’d tune in for this part. He got a groundout, then a pair of strikeouts to end the game 1-0. Not a bad way to start the day.

Step one on the path to regaining confidence was figuring out ways of winning no matter what, and that defines the previous series against the Royals—a hard-fought sweep with three close games against one of the worst teams in the sport. Step two is managing to carry on these results against superior opposition such as they’ll face in this four-game set versus the Brewers, owners of the best record in the National League for the second year in a row.

As if turning Kyle Harrison into a dominant starter wasn’t enough, the Brewers have managed to develop Shane Drohan into a solid one. Drohan was acquired alongside Harrison in an offseason trade with the Red Sox that sent Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, and Anthony Seigler to Boston. Coming off his worst outing of the season, in which he allowed six runs in a loss against the Twins, Drohan will be making his third appearance of the year. Drohan twice appeared in relief when the Dodgers visited the Brewers back in May, allowing three runs, two of them earned, in 4.1 innings.

For Roki Sasaki, the Dodgers starter in this series opener, who will only be making his second start at home in the last month, the matchup with the Brewers has its appeal. The starting pitcher with the highest HR/9 currently on the Dodgers staff, Sasaki, will face the team with the lowest number of home runs in all of baseball. Milwaukee enters play today with 111 home runs; for the purposes of comparison, that’s 44 fewer long balls than the Dodgers, who are tied for sixth overall. Keeping the ball in the yard, Sasaki has a chance to improve over .500, currently with a 5-5 record.

Thursday’s game info

• Teams: Dodgers vs. Brewers
• Ballpark: Dodger Stadium
• Start time: 7:10 p.m.
• TV: SportsNet LA, MLB Network (out of market)
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

After burning through their weekly allotment of runs Wednesday, the Yankees were all out of offense an afternoon later. 

If Tuesday’s big, four-run inning and Wednesday’s big, 10-run game looked like the beginnings of a stirring of the Yankees’ offense, Thursday the group looked drowsy once more. 

Perhaps that was the Logan Gilbert effect, but regardless of the cause, the Yankees were shut out for a seventh time this season in a 1-0 loss in front of 41,842 in The Bronx, where they could not finish off a sweep of the Mariners. 

On a day the Rays were idle, the Yankees (68-53) fell to a season-worst 6 ½ games behind in the AL East before trips to Toronto and Baltimore. 

Games like this series finale — in which the Yankees finished with four hits, went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and watched Max Fried and even their ‘B’ bullpen (Ryan Yarbrough, Yerry De los Santos and Fernando Cruz) deal — have become commonplace for a team that just has not scored enough with its best bats hurting. 

And yet they somehow have won 18 of their past 29 games, sweating through each narrow victory and narrow defeat. 

“It’s been playoffs every day, it feels like,” manager Aaron Boone said of a club whose last three defeats have come by scores of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-1. “I got people on the street saying, ‘Hey, it’ll turn around.’ 

“I’m like, ‘We’re doing all right.’ ” 

The rallying cry from the clubhouse during an extended period in which just about every game is a toss-up is that these anxieties should help later. 

“Games like this are battles,” said George Lombard Jr., who was again impressive with his glove but went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. “And that’s how games are in October. So just practice finding a way to win those tight games.” 

Their offense had shown signs of breaking through in the first two contests against Seattle, which boasts one of the best pitching staffs in the sport, but Gilbert (six innings, four hits, seven strikeouts) and the Mariners bullpen were overwhelming. 

With Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger watching from the dugout, the offense they left behind did not muster many chances and did not do anything with the few they did. 

“I thought early on we had some good at-bats against [Gilbert], right from jump with [Trent] Grisham and [Spencer] Jones smoking balls for outs in the first inning, and then [Luis] García [Jr.] leads off the second with a double, gives us a good scoring opportunity,” Boone said. “But from there, we just weren’t able to do much.” 

After his double, García (the only Yankee with multiple hits) watched Lombard (foul out), Jazz Chisholm Jr. (one of his three strikeouts) and José Caballero (pop out) go down in order. 

Their best opportunity probably came in the third, when Ali Sánchez sliced a one-out single down the right field line before Grisham drilled what looked like a double into the same area. But Grisham’s momentum took him into and briefly off second base, and a Mariners challenge found that he had been tagged out coming off the base. After a Ben Rice ground out, Sánchez was stranded on third. 

No other Yankee reached scoring position until the seventh, when a rally formed around Caballero walking, reaching second on an error and stealing third to pair with a Ryan McMahon walk. But a pinch-hitting Amed Rosario became the third Yankees batter to be punched out on a Mariners automated ball-strike system challenge. 

Wasted was a solid, if not efficient, effort from Max Fried, who allowed one run on five hits and two walks in five innings, not throwing enough strikes (55) during an 88-pitch afternoon. 

His only blemish was a second-inning, 2-2 cutter to Weston Wilson, who turned on it and clobbered a home run to left field. In Fried’s first 14 starts this season, he had allowed just one homer while facing 312 batters. 

And that was the game. Such is the Yankees’ margin for error. 

“We’re just grinding through it right now,” Boone said after another series victory that did not quite feel like one.

I sincerely hope nobody reading this recap took a friend, family member, or romantic partner to this afternoon’s Yankees game, hoping to make a baseball fan for life in the process.

Last night would have been a great game for that sort of thing. The Bombers clawed their way back from an early deficit and beat the brakes off the Mariners in a 10-5 thriller. It’s a fallacy to think in these terms, but it seems as if they expended all the remaining offense they had in their stores for the homestand in that evening tilt. The only scoring either of these two lineups could produce was a home run for Seattle’s Weston Wilson with the bases empty in the second—the rest of the afternoon was dominated by pitching. Logan Gilbert led the charge with a six-inning scoreless performance, outdueling Max Fried as the visitors avoided the sweep and ended their six-game slide with a 1-0 final.

As mentioned, all the offense you would get if you bought a ticket for this getaway day game was a solo home run in the second inning. It was just the second round-tripper allowed by Fried in 2026—and it came against Weston Wilson, a bench bat for Seattle who only had three long balls on the year. Inserted into the lineup over promising regular Cole Young, Wilson fell to two strikes with two outs before a misplaced cutter from Fried gave him a chance to sock one over the left field wall.

An inning later, it looked as if the Yankees had a splendid scoring opportunity. A single from ninth-place hitter Ali Sánchez was followed by a double by the suddenly scorching Trent Grisham, giving the Yankees two runners in scoring position with just one out for Ben Rice.

Well, until the Mariners challenged, and upon review it was abundantly clear that Grisham had slid too hard into second, bunny-hopping off the base and permitting Leo Rivas to apply the tag on him while he was suspended in midair. Abra-cadabra, the double turned into a big second out for Logan Gilbert, who rolled Rice over to second to neutralize the threat. I gave my fair share of grief to the now-demoted Jasson Domínguez for falling in love with the headfirst slide and subsequently giving away outs, but there’s an art to the footfirst slide too—Grisham did not practice it there. Can we get some drills going?

Like his last start on Friday, Fried was sharp, but his counterpart was sharper. Max scattered five hits and did some of his best work with two outs to prevent any crooked numbers, but Logan Gilbert mowed his way through the Yankee lineup to make the one misplaced cutter to Wilson stand up.

While Randy Arozarena and Julio Rodríguez failed to combine for a run in the fifth, they collectively saw enough pitches with two out to force Aaron Boone to the bullpen the following frame. Ryan Yarbrough did his best Fried impression with a perfect sixth, striking out a pair.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Yankees’ mission was as follows: get somebody into scoring position for Luis García Jr., who was the only guy in the lineup to solve Gilbert multiple times. He doubled to lead off the second, then singled with one out in the fourth, but the Yankees failed to advance him in either instance. He was due up fourth, so the Bombers needed to get somebody on and ideally somebody over.

Well, the Bombers got a man on, as Ben Rice worked a four-pitch walk. But thanks to the power of ABS challenges, the Bombers failed to get him over; Jhonny Pereda made two successful challenges on outside fastballs with two strikes to give Gilbert a pair of big Ks. García came up and battled Gilbert to the hilt, but ultimately fell on the pitch which gave the home team fits all afternoon: the splitter. The tall Seattle righty finished with six scoreless innings, scattering four hits, the lone walk to Rice, and striking out seven.

More frustration followed in the seventh, even as the Yankees built a two-out rally from dryer lint and a couple of Cheerios. In other words: Eduard Bazardo issued a pair of two-out walks, permitting a chance for Amed Rosario to tie the game off the bench. But Rosario quickly slipped into an 0-2 hole, then fell victim to yet another successful challenge of a borderline pitch by Pereda, who probably deserved game MVP honors among position players given the triumvirate of punchouts he reclaimed for his pitchers. The Yankees at least managed to get their fans to stand up in considerable number before getting them to sit back down again.

José A. Ferrer made quick work of the Bombers and pinch-hitter Heliot Ramos in the eighth, setting the stage for the ninth. Seattle closer Andrés Muñoz faced all three Juniors in succession—García, Lombard, and Chisholm. García bounced one to second, Lombard struck out on three pitches, and Chisholm swung through a slider to cement a 1-0 dud from a Yankee lineup which sorely missed Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton.

If you thought, boy, the Yankees sure played like they had a flight to catch…well, they did. Get ready to learn Toronto dialect, buddy. That’s where the Bombers are headed: north of the border to Rogers Centre to kick off a road trip. The Blue Jays did the Yankees a massive favor by taking at least three games from the Red Sox earlier in the week—now New York will try to communicate their gratitude by defeating them. Isn’t that nice? Gerrit Cole will take on Shane Bieber in the series opener tomorrow night at 7:15 PM on Apple TV+.

Box Score

While the Los Angeles Dodgers say Mark Walter's sale of the Lakers will have no impact on the baseball club and there are no plans to sell the back-to-back World Series winners, their best player's record-setting contract is tied to the current owner's presence in the organization.

As part of Shohei Ohtani's 10-year, $700 million contract deal for the 2024 season (with $680 million deferred), the four-time MVP has the ability to opt out of the contract if Walter or Dodgers president Andrew Friedman leaves the organization.

Ohtani's contract states that if there is "specific change in Dodger personnel, player may opt out of contract at end of season the change occurs," USA TODAY Sports reported in 2023.

It was believed to be the first time such a "key man" provision had been included in a player contract.

“When you sit down with people and you form a bond and a partnership," Ohtani's agent Nez Balelo told USA TODAY, “it’s important that you keep the band together.

"If the band falls apart, at least you have options. We felt like it was important to say that as long as everyone stays together, we’re all in."

For now, Dodgers owner Mark Walter does not appear to be trying to sell the team.

But even if he does, don’t expect it to impact two-way star Shohei Ohtani.

In the 10-year, $700 million contract he signed with the Dodgers before the 2024 season, Ohtani included a “key-man clause” that would allow him to opt out of the deal if either Walter or president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman left the franchise during his tenure with the club.

However, even in the case of a hypothetical sale by Walter, the four-time MVP would seemingly be unlikely to exercise that option, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to the California Post.

That removes at least one potential unknown amid the sea of uncertainty currently surrounding the Dodgers’ owner.

Speculation over Ohtani’s key-man clause initially arose on Wednesday, in the wake of Walter’s stunning decision to sell the Lakers only a year after acquiring them.

That transaction, Dodgers president Stan Kasten insisted repeatedly, is not expected to have any impact on the Dodgers, nor served as any signal Walter could now try selling the baseball club.

Still, given the ongoing federal investigation into Walter’s business empire, and another Wednesday report from Bloomberg that the businessman had been seeking to raise capital to pay back loans being probed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, a potential Dodgers sale didn’t feel implausible.

And if one were to happen, it would leave Ohtani with a decision.

However, as The Athletic first reported, there are no signs the 32-year-old would be looking to leave the franchise.

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Since joining the Dodgers, Ohtani has won two MVP awards, two World Series, accomplished the first 50/50 season in MLB history, and found an apparent comfort level with the team after a six-year run with the Angels.

His decision to defer $680 million of his contract has also worked out as intended, allowing the team to surround him with layers of superstar talent.

Circumstances could always change, especially given all the questions that continue to linger around Walter.

But for now, Ohtani is clearly content in Los Angeles; so much so, even if he had the chance to use his opt-out, it’s unlikely he would do so.