ATLANTA — When Jazz Chisholm Jr. is present, fireworks generally aren’t far behind him.
But Monday night at Truist Park, the Bahamas product was unable to find the power spark that netted him 17 homers before the All-Star break, hitting just three in the first round of the 2025 T-Mobile Home Run Derby.
Still, Chisholm and his batting practice battery mate Geron Sands had a full-circle moment under the velvety Atlanta sky.
Chisholm had promised Sands, his stepdad who has been throwing him BP pitches since he was a child, that one day he’d do so in a Major League setting.
Sands, who serves as the director of baseball operations for the International Elite Sports Academy in Nassau, played an integral role in Chisholm’s development and eventual ascension to the bigs. His success with Chisholm has catapulted into professional pathways for other top talents, including Marlins infield prospect Ian Lewis and Diamondbacks outfield prospect Kristian Robinson.
Sands is working to make the Bahamas a baseball powerhouse in terms of prospect production. But it all started with a ball in his hand, and a bat in Chisholm’s. And despite not accomplishing his ultimate goal in the Derby, the magnitude of the moment reigned supreme for the 27-year-old.
“I had that full-circle moment in my head during the round,” Chisholm said, flashing a diamond-encrusted grin. “With, like, a minute and a half, right before I called my timeout, I think I hit a fly ball to the infield or something like that, or a foul ball back. And I smiled to myself, and I was like, ‘Dang, we are actually doing this right now. We’re actually hitting in a Home Run Derby, and he’s actually throwing to me.’
“And then after that is when my mind really just cleared to like, ‘Bro, we’re having fun, and we’re enjoying this.’”
Chisholm struggled to find lift in his swing to start his round, slicing a number of line drives down the right-field line. He broke through onto the board around 30 seconds into the three-minute round with a Statcast-projected 453-foot moonshot before calling a timeout at the halfway mark.
Chisholm was greeted by a pair of Aarons — Boone and Judge — the latter of whom commended his swing path.
“[Judge] said, ‘Hey, you didn’t mess up your swing,’” Chisholm said, laughing. “That was basically it, he was like, ‘You got it, just keep on doing that, just hit your line drives.’”
“I’m going to keep my natural swing,” Chisholm said at the All-Star media availability Monday, “’cause I naturally hit home runs.”
The lefty with the speedy bat path has corked six homers of more than 400 feet this year (with a season high of 442 feet, per Statcast), while 15 of his 17 have left the yard with an exit velocity of more than 100 mph. But Chisholm is a line-drive hitter with a stroke that doesn’t necessarily fare well in competitions like this.
“You feel the competition,” Chisholm said of the difference between the Derby and live action. “You hear the crowd. Everybody’s, like, rooting on you. You see your guys, you call the timeout, you talk to your teammates. It’s just a lot that goes into it.”
It wasn’t a bad change of pace, though, for a man who has acclimated to a new environment more than once: from the Bahamas to Miami, and from Miami to New York.
“For me, I enjoyed every second,” Chisholm said. “Even after I was done, my arms were hanging. I was like, ‘Oh, this is amazing.’”
So amazing that he would do it all again. But only under special stipulations.
“I told [MLB], if I got more than 20 homers by the half next year, I’d do it again,” Chisholm said.
