𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

NEW YORK — Jazz Chisholm Jr. quietly stood at his locker, packing his duffel bag with equipment for the New York Yankees’ six-game trip to Toronto and Baltimore. He looked quizzically at the bats he’d pack, hoping one of them might deliver the results he’s been searching for since the season began.

Chisholm is usually a man of many words. Few in the Yankees’ clubhouse have as bright a personality as the second baseman, but there was nothing to say Thursday afternoon after another dismal performance. He finished 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in a 1-0 loss to the Seattle Mariners. He swung at seven pitches and whiffed on four. The other three swings resulted in two foul balls and a weak groundball to Mariners first baseman Josh Naylor.

It’s been a season from hell for Chisholm at the plate, and he is at a loss for answers to address his lack of success.

“If I knew, I would already have fixed the problem,” Chisholm told The Athletic. “Even when I think I’m getting going hitting, it’s still an out. I’m still hitting it right at someone. I can hit it 107 (mph) and still hit it right at someone.”

His 92 wRC+ makes Chisholm one of the 20 worst qualified hitters across MLB. He picked the wrong year to have a career-worst season at the plate. He’ll be a free agent after this season, and his performance might cost him millions of guaranteed dollars.

Chisholm came into the season with the highest of expectations, proclaiming he would become the second player in MLB history, joining Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, to finish with at least 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases. Although he won’t reach those numbers, he has an opportunity to post a 20-40 season, which would still be eye-popping. The raw numbers do not tell the story of Chisholm’s season, though. Outside of the home runs (17) and stolen bases (31), he’s mostly been inefficient.

His on-base percentage has dipped below .300. His strikeout percentage ranks in the bottom 10 among all hitters. He has the fifth-worst percentage in making contact on pitches thrown inside the strike zone. No qualified hitter has provided less value against curveballs than Chisholm, according to FanGraphs. Alarmingly, he has swung and missed at nearly 40 percent of all breaking pitches this season.

And yet, he thinks he’s been worse than what the numbers say.

“I feel like I have a 40 percent whiff rate on every pitch right now,” Chisholm said. “I don’t know why. I swing up. I swing down. I’ve tried to fix it a couple of different ways. When I fix it, it’s still unlucky.”

He’s not simply unlucky. His contact quality is actually bad, and his expected numbers suggest the results could be even worse. His .289 xwOBA, which is formulated using exit velocity and launch angle, estimates Chisholm is outperforming his 92 wRC+ by roughly 10 percentage points.

No matter how you slice the numbers, Chisholm’s underwhelming bat has hurt the Yankees, who have been begging for offensive contributors to step up with the big bats of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger sidelined. Without Judge since the start of June, the Yankees are tied with the Los Angeles Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays for the second-worst offense in MLB by wRC+.

Chisholm’s down season has also hurt his value in free agency. He knows what’s at stake this offseason, but he said it hasn’t gotten in his head. At least one of his teammates, though, has talked with him about the pressure of being an impending free agent. Chisholm said Paul Goldschmidt had an extended conversation with him earlier this season about playing free and not worrying about his next contract.

“I don’t think free agency has weighed on me more than just me not playing well,” Chisholm said. “That’s all I want to do. It doesn’t matter if it was a free-agent year or my first year in the league. I still just want to play well and play to the best of my ability. I know that’s not happening.”

Outside of the home runs (17) and stolen bases (31), Jazz Chisholm Jr. has mostly been ineffective at the plate. (Jessie Alcheh / Getty Images)

The Yankees are at a loss, too, to explain Chisholm’s down season. Manager Aaron Boone said he didn’t know the reason for his second baseman’s struggles. He noted Chisholm has not chased out of the strike zone at an alarming rate. Chisholm entered Thursday’s game with a slightly above-average chase rate. A key difference this season is he has rolled over on groundballs more often than at any point of his career, which is usually a sign he is not timing pitches well.

But Boone does not think the weight of this season is impacting Chisholm negatively.

“He expects to be great,” Boone said. “But that’s part of this game. You’ve gotta handle that. Different guys say different things publicly. They’re just that. It’s a grind of a season for everyone involved. You’ve got to be able to handle all of the things, and he is. He hasn’t found that stretch of play that he’s obviously done with us the last couple of years and that he’s accustomed to and that he expects.”

As the season progresses, one thing Boone should consider is benching Chisholm on days when the Yankees face a left-handed starter. Chisholm has a 74 wRC+ against lefty pitching, and he has not earned the benefit of the doubt to work through those struggles. He also does not believe sitting for a few days to reset is a good option.

“I think if I was to sit for a couple days, I don’t think that would help,” Chisholm said. “Just play through it. That’s the only way I know how to get through anything is to keep going through it. I feel like to just sit on it and (dwell) isn’t a good move, either.”

Despite the offensive woes, Chisholm said he’s not concerned because he’s not mentally defeated. He would feel differently if he didn’t think he could break through. After spending much of the season searching for a solution, he’s beginning to wonder whether the answer might be to stop looking so hard for one.

“I probably need to dive a little bit deeper, or I might need to work a little bit less because, normally, I don’t work as much,” Chisholm said. “I might have to switch it in that way.”