Yankees Take Swing, Add Jazz

After the Orioles made two trades on Friday afternoon, the old-money machine has sputtered to life with 72 hours until the trade deadline. The New York Yankees have acquired center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Miami Marlins in exchange for three prospects: Triple-A catcher Agustin Ramirez is the headline name, but the Marlins also get A-ball infielder Jared Serna, along with Abrahan Ramirez from the Yankees’ Complex League team.

Having a player named Jazz on the Yankees is like Christmas morning for the folks who write headlines for the New York Post. If I could have any job in mass media, it’d be writing back page headlines for… probably not literally the Post, but a tabloid with a slightly more erudite tone.

I bring up the tabloids because any conversation about Chisholm seems to end up being a conversation about the conversation about Chisholm, so let’s get that out of the way first.

A mooted Chisholm-to-the-Yankees trade has been bouncing around the rumor mill for a while now, and said rumors have kicked up no small amount of consternation. Chisholm isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; this spring, the then-Marlins outfielder talked openly about how his first couple seasons in the majors were turned into a toxic nightmare by veteran teammates who disliked him. That’s only Chisholm’s side of the story, of course, but his side of the story reads as that of a young player being bullied for the way he dresses.

With the Yankees reportedly concerned about Chisholm’s fit in the clubhouse, New York Daily News beat writer Gary Phillips talked to people within the Yankees organization who’d worked with Chisholm in Miami, including hitting coach James Rowson. For what it’s worth, none of Phillips’ interlocutors had anything bad to say about Chisholm.

There are examples of vague Bad Makeup chatter being a precursor to a player actually being a bad teammate or a bad person. But other times — more frequently, I’d argue — it turns out to be backbiting about an outspoken young player (especially a young Black or Caribbean player, like Chisholm) who’s viewed as not knowing his place.

Absent specific examples of Chisholm doing anything worse than wearing too much jewelry, I’m inclined to believe he’ll fit in just fine on the Yankees. There were similar concerns about Alex Verdugo and Marcus Stroman heading into this season, and despite those fears, the Yankees are 60-45 and as far as I’m aware they’re not on the brink of a season-ruining clubhouse meltdown. It’s even possible that Chisholm will benefit from being a big fish in the biggest pond in the country, as opposed to being the only Marlins player 90% of sports fans have heard of.

It’ll probably be fine. And if it does go bad, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind New York’s tabloid headline writers not to overlook the fact that “Chisholm” rhymes with “schism.” Don’t get fixated on making Jazz puns, or you’ll leave meat on the bone.

With all that said, I do actually agree with one stone critics love to fling at Chisholm: He is a little overrated. What I mean by that is he gets talked about like a star, when in actuality he’s more of an above-average starter at an up-the-middle position. He’s never hit 20 home runs or stolen 30 bases in a season. He’s not a very good percentage basestealer and he strikes out too much. And despite making an All-Star team and ending up on the cover of MLB: The Show, he’s never had a 3-WAR season. The best year of Chisholm’s career by a country mile was 2022, when he slugged .535 in a campaign that was cut to 60 games by back problems. And that player hasn’t been seen at any other point in Chisholm’s time in the majors.

So why do the Yankees want him?

Two reasons. The first is the list of starting center fielders they’ve used this season: Aaron Judge, who shouldn’t be playing center field, and Trent Grisham, who’s hitting .183. Chisholm could regress into an utter mediocrity and still help the Yankees.

Second, Chisholm’s made encouraging steps forward in several areas of weakness: He’s currently rocking a career-high walk rate and a career-low strikeout rate. A 24.9% strikeout rate isn’t good, but it’s tolerable, unlike the 30.8% mark Chisholm posted last year. His 22-for-30 stolen base rate isn’t anything to write home about, but he’s running at a higher volume this year and his overall baserunning metrics are among the top 10 in baseball. Chisholm’s power is down — he’s currently toting around a career-low .407 SLG — but his wRC+ is 104.

Now, 104 isn’t star-level, even for a center fielder. But the Yankees’ offense is currently being floated by two of the best hitters in baseball — you could argue the two best without being laughed out of the room — who are both having career years. Apart from Judge and Juan Soto, though, the Yankees have one, count ‘em one, healthy position player with at least 100 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 100 or better: Austin Wells. I guess they have two now, having just acquired Chisholm. It’s a weird thing to say about a Yankees team that’s on pace to win 93 games, but they need all the decent position players they can get.

And because Chisholm has experience at second base, he can plug multiple holes. Yankees third basemen are hitting .231/.292/.310 this year, leaving the Bronx Bombers 27th in the league in wRC+ at the hot corner. Could a galaxy-brained Aaron Boone install Chisholm at second and slide Gleyber Torres over to third? What’s the worst that could happen?

So Chisholm is an upgrade at a position of weakness. He makes the lineup younger and faster, and while he hasn’t shown much of it this year, he’s flashed serious power in the past, which might be relevant for a left-handed hitter moving to Yankee Stadium. Oh, and while the Yankees probably care less about this than most clubs, he’s making just $2.65 million this year and is under team control for two seasons beyond this one. Torres, it bears mentioning, is in his final year of team control. If and when he leaves as a free agent, Chisholm could fill the hole at second base.

What does all that cost?

The headline prospect moving down to Florida is Agustin Ramirez. The 22-year-old took ages to get out of rookie ball, but he made a big splash this spring by hitting 16 home runs in just 58 games for Double-A Somerset. That earned him a promotion to Triple-A, where he’s adjusting: .224/.328/.364 in 29 games, with iffy defense. Eric Longenhagen says it’s unlikely he stays at catcher full-time — his receiving is improving, but his blocking and throwing are liabilities. (I was crushed to learn that Ramirez’s arm was fringy; I was hoping he had an 80-grade cannon that would allow me to gift the tabloid gods with a “Guns of Agustin” pun.)

But that power is special, especially for a guy who can even fake it behind the plate. Eric sees him as a first baseman and DH who owns catcher’s gear and can get behind the plate a couple times a week, in the mold of a Ryan Jeffers or a young Mitch Garver. He moves into the Top 100 at no. 72 as a 50 FV prospect.

Serna, a 22-year-old 45+ FV prospect from Mexico, is a little guy (5-foot-7) who swings really hard and makes a good amount of contact for a hitter with that approach. He’s hitting .253/.341/.444 in A-ball with a 10.2% walk rate and a 15.3% strikeout rate. Serna was the no. 14 prospect in the Yankees system (Ramirez was no. 5), and while his arm isn’t up to the standards of an everyday shortstop, he has the potential to be a plus defender at second. Eric says that if he continues to hit, and to grow defensively, Serna has a shot to land on the Top 100 list this offseason and to reach the majors in 2025.

Having already acquired a Ramirez and a little guy in this trade, the Marlins round out their prospect return with someone who fits both of those descriptions. Abrahan Ramirez is a 19-year-old in his first season of complex ball in the U.S. — the Venezuela native had spent the previous two seasons at the Yankees’ facility in the Dominican Republic. He’s split time between second and third, and while his left-handed swing has produced only two home runs in 49 games, he’s hit 14 doubles and three triples. Teenagers on the complex being high-variance and far from the majors, you can probably forget about Abrahan Ramirez until and unless he hits at Double-A in a few years.

So for all the hemming and hawing, this is a pretty simple trade. The Yankees got an upgrade at a position of need, a player who is good now with the potential to get better. Oh, and he’s cheap and team-controlled. Not fixing the center field problem wasn’t really an option, so the alternatives were either sending the entire farm for Luis Robert Jr. or trying to work out a deal for someone like Lane Thomas, who isn’t as good as Chisholm and wouldn’t actually fix the center field problem anyway.

The Marlins either bought high on Agustin Ramirez or are acquiring him right as his career trajectory is on an upswing. Serna is a nice secondary piece, and whatever they get from Abrahan Ramirez is a bonus. How they feel about dealing their highest-profile position player five years from now will depend entirely on how well they develop these three prospects. It’s an A+ trade for the tabloid editors; for everyone else, it gets the job done.