Jazz Chisholm is the key Yankees X-factor in these playoffs

Jazz Chisholm Jr.is all that now stands between the Yankees and an atrocious trade deadline.Enyel De Los Santos — remember him? — had a five-game Yankee career, a 13.63 ERA, and then did the reverse Jake Cousins/Tim Hill and ended up going from The Bronx to the 121-loss White Sox.

He cost the Yankees outfielder Brandon Lockridge, who is on the Padres’ postseason roster as a pinch-runner/spare outfielder. You know who didn’t make a postseason roster — at least not yet? Mark Leiter Jr. The Yanks obtained Leiter Jr.from the Cubs, believing he would be in their late-game circle of trust.

Instead, he was kept off the American League Division Series roster after pitching to a 4.98 ERA and .301 batting average against in 21 Yankees games.Leiter Jr.cost Jack Neely and Ben Cowles, the Cubs’ 18th- and 29th-ranked prospects according to MLB.com.

But the bigger one is opportunity cost. For a case can be offered that the Royals, the Yankees’ ALDS competition beginning Saturday night, made the best deadline deal for a reliever in acquiring Lucas Erceg, who emerged as their lockdown closer afterward.Meanwhile, the Yankees made two of the worst for De Los Santos and Leiter Jr. I would assume that with Tim Hill, Clay Holmes, Tommy Kahnle — and even Jonathan Loaisiga and Lou Trivino— about to be free agents that the Yankees will tender Leiter Jr.

a contract and try to revive him next season.But even pondering that subject exemplifies how badly the Yankees’ relief acquisitions at the deadline went.So that leaves Chisholm, who is the kind of player who can embrace the bright lights of this moment and go off positively, or get absorbed in trying to be the man and cost the Yankees.In a 140-word answer on what he anticipates from Chisholm playing his first home playoff game ever — notably in this home — Aaron Boone used the term “he’s cut out for it” three times.That speaks to the obvious showman in Chisholm — the one that can allow him to flouris...