What’s that, the Yankees offense is showing the faintest stirrings from a summer of dormancy? It’s just one game, but the eight runs they scored against the normally excellent Pirates starter Braxton Ashcraft is a step in the right direction. Jazz Chisholm Jr. took center stage with his two home runs and season-high five RBIs, but it’s his big swing against the Dodgers from the night before along with Cody Bellinger’s clutch RBI single in the first which earn the co-nomination for At-bat of the Week.
We kick things off with Bellinger in the first inning, the Yankees looking to stave off a sweep by the Dodgers in the doubleheader and the series. It’s a bullpen game for both teams, Los Angeles opening affairs with hard throwing reliever Will Klein, a cult hero from the 18-inning Game 3 marathon in last year’s World Series. Paul Goldschmidt kept the frame alive with a two-out double, giving Bellinger a crucial opportunity to score early after getting blanked into the fourth inning of the first two games.
Normally a pitcher who leans heavily on his four-seamer, Klein introduces a wrinkle with a first pitch looking to get Bellinger to expand.
Klein executes an excellent slider that looks like a strike down and in out of Klein’s hand before breaking out of the zone toward Bellinger. Bellinger reads the pitch immediately which is how he knows to limbo out of the way of a pitch that many hitters would have chased had they been expecting a first-pitch fastball.
After failing to get Bellinger to chase that slide, Klein returns to his bread-and-butter looking to blow a high fastball by the hitter.
He achieves exactly that, throwing this 96 mph four-seamer right by Bellinger, who is quite tardy with his swing. It’s a well-located heater, central over the plate but elevated just above the top ledge of the strike zone, close enough that Bellinger can’t avoid chasing.
The classic follow up to an elevated heater that induced a late whiff is to go right back to that back-foot slider as Bellinger’s bat should be sped up to the speed of the fastball.
The problem is that Klein leaves this cement-mixer slider right out over the plate, a complete mistake that Bellinger punishes. This is such a classic two-out, runner in scoring position swing from Bellinger — short, flat, and compact to the ball, not trying to do anything more than send it right back the way it came to drive in Goldschmidt as the game’s opening run.
Here’s the full AB:
We have to fast forward to the eighth inning for the second half of our breakdown. The Dodgers have tied the game, 1-1, on a pinch-hit solo home run by Tommy Edman in the top half of the frame. With the bottom half of the order due up in the final two innings, Jazz represents the Yankees’ best chance to score in regulation. He’s already struck out twice and popped out with the bases loaded, so you wonder if he is feeling a little extra pressure to provide a positive contribution to his team. The Dodgers have brought in another hard-throwing righty in Evan Phillips, who quietly was a top-five reliever in baseball from 2022 through 2024 before Tommy John surgery cost him most of this year and last.
Phillips is pretty much a two-pitch pitcher, relying on the four-seamer and sweeper a combined 80.4-percent of the time. However, against lefties, you’re gonna get a steady diet of four-seamers, and that’s exactly how he starts off this AB.
This is a pretty good heater up and away, close enough to the zone that you wouldn’t be surprised to see Jazz swing. However, he reads the pitch all the way into the catcher’s mitt for ball one.
Jazz got a really good look at the velocity and movement profile of that four-seamer, tracking the pitch its whole journey toward home. He also has likely seen the scouting report on Phillips reveling the tendency to lean on the four-seamer against lefties. Combine these two facts and he can pretty much sit on another heater and effectively match his swing timing and bat path to the pitch.
That is precisely the outcome, Jazz sitting back a hair on this four-seamer knowing that between his own power and the velocity on the pitch, he has more than enough juice to send it out of the park to all fields. He unleashes a beautiful swing staying inside the pitch and sending it oppo over the wall in left-center for the game-winning home run.
Here’s the full AB:
David Cone brought up an expert point on the broadcast of the series opener against the Pirates, conveying his belief that Bellinger and Jazz are the two biggest X-factors who the Yankees need to get going in this extended stretch without Aaron Judge. Both were mired in deep slumps for the opening weeks of summer but have shown encouraging signs of turning things around lately. Bellinger has a 156 wRC+ dating back to the final game of the Rays series while Jazz has four home runs in his last seven games. Their quality of AB has certainly taken a step up according to the eye test. If the Yankees are to achieve all of their goals this season, their stars have to play like stars, and Bellinger and Jazz are starting to perform like stars again.
