Jazz Chisholm Jr. was not in the starting lineup for the Yankees against the Red Sox in Game 1 of their American League Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.
With star left-hander Garrett Crochet on the mound for Boston, Yankees manager Aaron Boone elected to go with a right-handed batter in place of the lefty-hitting Chisholm.
Chisholm did get a plate appearance in the ninth inning, but he flew out with the bases loaded against Boston closer Aroldis Chapman in an eventual 3-1 loss.
A home loss in the opener of a best-of-three postseason series — especially one in which you were on the bench to start — could be pretty depressing. But ballplayers have to figure out a way to wipe their memory of a rough game quickly in order to perform the next day.
There are different ways of going about that, but the one Chisholm used might not be one you’d expect.
“I played MLB The Show and I mercy-ruled someone,” Chisholm said when asked how he bounced back to help the Yankees even up the series in a 4-3 win on Wednesday night. “It’s true.”
That’s one way to decompress after a rough night at the real-life ballpark. Of course, it helps when you have the star power Chisholm had in the lineup for his “New York Aliens.”
“It’s my own personally-made team,” he said. “We got me, Ken Griffey Jr. on it, Jimmy Rollins. We were playing online, having fun. It’s a lot of fun.”
That does sound like fun. Not for the team Chisholm was playing, though.
“The score,” he said, “was 12-1.”
