Jazz always an SB threat but still learning
MIAMI -- Before exiting Tuesday's game with a mild right ankle sprain, Marlins rookie Jazz Chisholm Jr. turned to his aggressive baserunning a bit too much in the first inning.
After stealing his second base since returning from the injured list on May 16, Chisholm tried to nab third with two outs. Andrew Knapp threw over to Alec Bohm, who applied the tag to thwart Miami's rally. The Marlins would go on to lose to the Phillies, 2-0.
According to manager Don Mattingly, Chisholm doesn't have the green light at all times on the basepaths. For most of Adam Duvall's at-bat, the Marlins had him shut down, until Chisholm gave them a look that implied he caught something in Vince Velasquez's delivery and could steal the base easy. When that didn't happen and the inning ended, Mattingly spoke to Chisholm in the dugout.
Chisholm is tied for second in the National League with nine stolen bases, and has been caught two times. The speed element of Chisholm's game is a catalyst for Miami's offense. He ranks in the 95th percentile with a 29.0 ft/sec sprint speed. On the caught stealing, he was at 28.6 ft/sec -- but his primary lead of 13.4 feet and secondary lead of 28.1 feet weren't as great as they could've been.
"Jazz is a go forward, a little bit of a wild, little mustang the way he plays," Mattingly said. "We don't want to take that away. We want that aspect in there, and then just try to explain the game as we go when we have to control. If we think there's a chance that he'll run there and not make it, then we have to stop it. In that situation as I talked with him, if you're not 100 percent, that's just stealing a base to be stealing a base. He's going to score on any hit that's hit out there. That's got to be one for us [where] it's 100 percent. If they're not even wanting to throw it, then that's the time to take it, we'll take the base. But if it's not that situation, it's just a stolen base."
Outs on the bases have come far too frequently for the Marlins, but they were magnified more so in Tuesday's loss with limited chances to score. The club has been picked off an MLB-high eight times, called out on the bases 15 times and caught stealing another 11 -- third most in the Majors.
"There's been probably more than I would like," Mattingly said. "Pickoffs I don't really like, especially when you're getting picked off and you're not trying to run. That's something different than you're trying to steal a bag, you're trying to get a jump, you're trying to win games, you're trying to get bases. That part you don't want to take away from guys. It's the ones like Jazz running yesterday that's giving an out up that we don't need to give up. And we've had probably three or four, maybe five of those, and enough picks to last me a year at first when we're not running.
"But we want to be aggressive, we don't want to take that away from guys. It's kind of like Jazz -- we want him to be aggressive, but then you want to keep teaching, and knowing when the right time is. There's parts of the game that you say this is not the right time to take chances or you're down four or five runs and you're taking chances on the bases. You've got a lead or you're even, we're going to be more aggressive, we're going to force the issue. We just want to make sure that we understand when we do and when we don't."