The New York Yankees enter the 2026 season with a plethora of choices to pick for their leadoff spot. That said, one might be tempted to claim this team doesn’t have a prototypical leadoff hitter, but to do so, one would have to determine what makes a prototypical leadoff hitter these days. In 2026, the best leadoff hitters get on base by any means necessary, and any lineup aspiring to be one of the more productive offenses in the game has quite a few of those. At this point, flat-out good hitters dominate
the top spot; guys like Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani, and Ronald Acuña Jr have become signature leadoff guys, though no one would’ve batted an eye to see them hit second, or even third or fourth.
The Yankees have number of good hitters, which means they have a number of options to bat first. Joshua Diemert wrote recently about the merits of Ben Rice as a potential option in the number one spot in the Yankee lineup —he made great points that align with some of what I’ll say today, trying to make a case for Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Our focus is that most of the other alternatives, Rice and Trent Grisham, specifically, are coming off two productive seasons that deviate quite a bit from the expectations surrounding them. As much as the underlying data supports them carrying on, at least to some extent, the less pressure on them to repeat, the better. Neither has a long track record of elite hitting, and allowing them to continue to prove themselves lower in the order could prove beneficial.
The qualifying offer was always a likely outcome for Grisham’s return—as much as the Yankees needed him back, it would be very difficult to justify a long-term deal off one season from a hitter with a below league-average batting line in each of the prior three campaigns. Rice is coming off a breakout season, but only a year before, he managed to play himself out of a starting role on a team that had no other suitable options for his position. Rice’s 9.4% walk rate last year is pretty good, but it’s not necessarily the anchor to justify a spot leading off on its own.
Someone playing devil’s advocate could argue that many of the concerns voiced above regarding choosing Rice or Grisham for that spot also ring true with Chisholm. But for all the ups and downs in his career, Jazz had already established himself at a productive level before joining the Yankees, and with the projection of a walk rate similar to Rice, his speed is best utilized in the leadoff spot. Since joining New York, Chisholm has a success rate in stolen absences of roughly 83 percent, swiping 49 bags on 59 attempts. Who is more likely to suffer more with the threat of Jazz running and Aaron Judge up at the plate? Judge and Chisholm themselves, or the pitcher? I would posit that there’s a decent chance that, leading off, Chisholm’s already stellar steal success rate would improve even further if he was taking leads off first base while pitchers were concerned with dealing with the best hitter
Chisholm got on base just as much as Rice a year ago, and I think it’s a pretty fair to claim that at this time, he is better suited for the pressure of hitting in front of Judge—a pressure that can turn into a gift if he performs, as no one is likelier to see more pitches to hit than the player hitting in front of the reigning back-to-back AL MVP. Maybe Chisholm won’t win MVP, like he’s said he hopes to, but he’s a great choice to hit at the top of the Yankee lineup nonetheless.
