George Lombard Jr. is having the two Augusts a rookie can have, and he is having them in the same month. The Yankees shortstop became the first player at his position in franchise history to homer in his major league debut. He has also now made an error in six consecutive games, the first Yankee to do that since 2021. Same kid. Same three weeks.
That combination is not a contradiction, it is just what playing shortstop in the big leagues looks like before the reps catch up to the assignment. The position punishes you in public. A center fielder can misplay a route and it disappears into the box score as a double. A shortstop boots a two-hopper in the sixth and forty thousand people see it happen in real time, in the same instant, with the runner already rounding first. There is nowhere to put it.
checked the almanac: derek jeter made 56 errors in a single season at class a greensboro in 1993, and the yankees did not blink. three years later he was the american league rookie of the year and the position was his for two decades.
That is not a prediction about Lombard, it is a reminder that the error column is the loudest and least predictive stat a young infielder carries. Range, first-step reads, arm strength on the run: those hold. Clean hands on routine plays are usually the last thing to arrive and the first thing anyone notices is missing.
What matters now is how the Yankees handle it. Late August in the Bronx is not a gentle classroom, and Boston is in town for a weekend series that starts tonight. Running a rookie shortstop out there through a six-game skid on defense is a statement about what the club thinks he is going to be. Believing that is one thing. Doing it against the Red Sox in front of that crowd is another.
I am watching the glove, not the box score. Whether he keeps charging the slow roller instead of playing it safe on the back foot will tell me more than the next error will.
