World
Anthony Rizzo staring down undignified Yankees end after World Series miscue
Anthony Rizzo’s plan is to receive X-rays on the fourth and fifth fingers on his right hand Thursday and then assess what his future with the Yankees might be.
The club holds an option for next season with the veteran first baseman worth $17 million and Rizzo’s preference is to stay.
But the Yankees could just as easily give him a $6 million buyout and look in a different direction.
“I am going to talk with Cash and the Yankees and see what they are thinking,” Rizzo said, referring to general manager Brian Cashman after the team’s 7-6 loss to the Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series.
Rizzo’s prefers to remain with the club.
“I feel like I have a lot to offer to this game in a lot of different ways,” he said. “I don’t want to take this [uniform] off.”
Rizzo was in the middle of a play in the fifth inning Wednesday that helped flush the Yankees’ 5-0 lead and send the Dodgers toward the World Series trophy.
Mookie Betts hit a bases-loaded squib grounder to Rizzo that should have been the final out. But Rizzo was slow moving to the base and that got compounded by the fact Gerrit Cole wasn’t covering the bag.
Betts was safe, the Dodgers’ first run scored, and before the inning finished it was 5-5.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
“The balls off the bat against a righty, they are spinning,” Rizzo said. “I was going one way and the ball kicked another way, so you have just got to really follow it all the way because you don’t know what the ball is going to do.”
And a breakdown in communication with Cole didn’t help.
“Pitchers are always taught to get over no matter what,” Rizzo said. “It was just a weird spinning play.”
Rizzo, who broke two fingers last month and missed the ALDS before returning for the ALCS and World Series, said it was hard saying goodbye to his teammates afterward.
“That’s the last time you will ever be with that exact team, these exact people in that moment,” Rizzo said. “The uncertainty of what this clubhouse looks like next year is definitely up in the air. But when you lose like this, it’s more just giving each other hugs and letting each other know how much they mean to you.”