Report: MLB Investigating Exchange Between Braves Coach and Jazz Chisholm

Major League Baseball is reportedly investigating the incident involving Atlanta Braves assistant coach Eddie Pérez and New York Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm. According to The Athletic, Pérez was upset with Chisholm relaying signs to the Yankees dugout from second base, and the two communicated back and forth with gestures, including the Braves assistant coach pointing to his own head. 

The Yankees think Pérez may have said they would hit Chisholm by a pitch, while a report from MLB.com said that Pérez was telling Chisholm to think about his actions.  

The exchange was caught live on the Yankees broadcast and posted online by Jomboy Media, which The Athletic included in their report. 

After Pérez made the gesture, Chisholm told Yankees third base coach Luis Rojas what he believed he saw and also pointed to his head in describing it to him. 

The incident happened in the top of the sixth inning while Chisholm was on second base with Anthony Volpe at the plate. Volpe hit a sac fly that scored Giancarlo Stanton and made the score 7-5, as the Yankees continued their comeback in what would become a 12-9 win over the Braves. 

"I was just saying, ‘Be smart,’” Pérez said to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch. “I like that guy. He’s one of my favorites. And he got mad about it. I don’t know why he got mad about it. So I was like, ‘Take it easy,’ and he started doing some [stuff].”

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said “there’s no place” for those types of comments in baseball and hoped that Pérez was threatening a bean ball. 

That’s certainly something that would not be OK. I hope he didn’t mean anything like that by it, because that would deserve some looking into,” Boone said, per The Athletic. 

Chisholm declined to comment on the incident after the game and declined again to talk on Sunday. 

According to The Athletic, this is the second time this month that the Yankees caught relaying signs from second base. The first time was against the Seattle Mariners on July 10. As long as there is no use of electronic devices, this method of tipping off signs is legal. 

MLB and the MLBPA agreed on rules for handling sign stealing via electronic devices back in 2020. 

“If a baserunner or coach identifies an opposing team's signs or pitch information through his own unaided observation of the pitcher, catcher or opposing team's dugout, that person may communicate that information to an on-field player or coach,” according to an ESPN report when the rule went into effect. 

The Braves led 5-0, then 7-2 in Saturday’s game. In the inning in which the exchange occurred, they allowed four of the 12 runs the Yankees would plate in the game, with at least one run being scored in each inning starting with the fifth. 

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