Jazz Chisholm Jr. on Yankees’ surge – ‘We’re the team to beat’

BOSTON — The New York Yankees outlasted the Boston Red Sox for the second straight day Saturday, beating their rivals 4-3 in front of a sellout crowd at Fenway Park to expand their lead for the top American League wild-card spot to 2½ games.

The Yankees’ 83-65 record ranks third in the American League, three games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East. With 14 games remaining, New York has an outside shot at claiming the AL East title and the league’s top seed for the second consecutive year.

But Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. doesn’t believe the standings accurately represent the league’s hierarchy. To him, the Yankees are the team to beat in the American League.

“I feel like any team that thinks they’re better than us, they should know that when we step on the field, that we’re coming with relentlessness and we’re coming to step on necks,” Chisholm said. “We’re not here to play around. We’re going to do the job and get the job done.”

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After going 2-for-4 with two stolen bases Friday, Chisholm finished Saturday 3-for-5 with a home run and three RBIs to move within one home run of becoming the third Yankee ever to post a 30/30 season and the first since Alfonso Soriano in 2003.

He said a recent “talk” among the players that occurred away from the ballpark helped spark the Yankees’ recent turnaround after the team squandered a comfortable lead in the AL East in mid-June.

“Honestly, everybody just started locking in,” Chisholm said.

The Yankees are 13-5 since Aug. 24, a stretch that began with a win over the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. The success was buoyed by winning six of seven games against the Washington Nationals and Chicago White Sox — two of the worst teams in the majors — but it has also included the Yankees going 7-4 against the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Houston Astros and Detroit Tigers — four AL clubs positioned to reach the postseason.

New York will complete the four-team gauntlet with Sunday night’s series finale at Fenway Park, facing AL Cy Young Award candidate Garrett Crochet. It will be the Yankees’ final regular-season game against a team over .500; they finish the schedule with three games against the Minnesota Twins, three against the White Sox and seven against the Baltimore Orioles.

“All these games are super important,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “So, to get another win in this place against, obviously a really good opponent and Crochet waiting tomorrow, so this was a good one to get. Hopefully, we can go out and finish off a great series.”

Through Saturday, the Yankees are 45-43 against teams over .500 this season. They’re 26-29 against AL teams with winning records. They’ll have to be better in October to reach the World Series again.

“We said it all year long, that we’ve been playing to everybody else’s level instead of our own level,” Chisholm said. “We’ve been letting games go. We’ve been losing games ourselves. Making errors, just having poor at-bats and stuff like that.

“So, at the end of the day, we finally looked ourselves in the mirror and realized we’re the team to beat, and that’s how we’ve been stepping on the field for the last two weeks.”