Add The New York Post on Google The one area of George Lombard Jr.’s game that the Yankees were banking on not being an issue as they dropped him into a playoff race has failed him over the past week.
But now they are trusting the 21-year-old’s other calling card to bust him out of it.
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After Lombard joined the wrong kind of historic company Thursday night by making an error for a sixth straight game — something no Yankees shortstop had done since 1915 — he was right back in the lineup on Friday, with the Yankees relying on his makeup and work ethic to help play his way out the defensive slump as they opened a crucial four-game series against the Red Sox in The Bronx.
“Obviously six games in a row, I get it, you never want that,” manager Aaron Boone said Friday afternoon. “But I really trust the kid and the person and the talent. So I think he’ll get through this and it’s a bump. There’s been some plays where he’s attacked a little bit differently or they’ve been in-between plays where he’s attacked a little bit differently. But I do feel like his work and his fundamentals will serve him well and pull him through.
New York Yankees shortstop George Lombard Jr. throws the ball to first base for an out during the fifth inning against the Houston Astros at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York, on Tuesday, August 25, 2026. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect “Even just listening to him [Thursday] night in his postgame [interview] and our little touch points with him, he’s more pissed off about it than he is deer in the headlights about it. I think he’s an outstanding defender and I think that will prove itself here over time.”
Throughout his time in the minor leagues, Lombard was known more for his glove than anything else — save for his makeup and high baseball IQ. The Yankees were confident that those tools could help carry him early on as he got his feet underneath him after he was called up in early August to replace Anthony Volpe with the club trying to chase down the Rays for the division and hold off the surging Red Sox behind them.
And while the recent string of errors have become impossible to ignore, the Yankees do not seem concerned about it shaking Lombard’s confidence or to believe that it is anything more than just a poorly timed stretch.
“I feel like he’s handling it really well,” infield, baserunning and first base coach Dan Fiorito said. “He comes in here, we’ll talk about the night before, the good, the bad, we’ll work on it, we’ll train. He seems so confident.
“This is definitely not characteristic of George to see it. I feel like watching him and seeing how poised he is and how he’s responded in each game after the misplay has been encouraging.”
No coach on the Yankees staff has seen or been around Lombard more than Fiorito, the former minor league coach who came up through the farm system with the top prospect. And while Lombard dazzled defensively in his first few weeks as a big leaguer before this stretch, the ability to make highlight-reel plays wasn’t what always stood out to Fiorito.
New York Yankees shortstop George Lombard Jr. backs up a grounder during the eighth inning against the Houston Astros on Thursday, August 27, 2026, at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY. Robert Sabo for NY Post “I always say, being with him in the minor leagues, watching him for years, the thing that stuck out to me was more the consistency,” Fiorito said. “It was his reliability. It was his ability to dominate the routine play. It was a little bit of a tough stretch lately, but that’s something that he’s always done really well and he’ll get back to that.”
After Lombard — who is out on the field pregame almost every day taking ground balls — said Thursday night that the errors were “not acceptable, can’t happen,” the mounting miscues had not appeared to affect his mentality on Friday.
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“I still trust myself,” Lombard told The Post’s Jon Heyman. “I want every ball hit to me and I know I’m going to make the plays. But it’s definitely frustrating.”
There were no indications that the Yankees were considering any roster changes like bringing back Volpe, who is in the midst of making a transition to second base (though he is still making occasional starts at shortstop, as he did on Friday with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre).
Lombard had seven errors in 947 innings at shortstop in 2025 between Double-A and High-A. This year, in 536 innings between Double-A and Triple-A, he had nine errors. That made his six errors over the last 50 innings before Friday even more stunning and head-scratching, if not concerning to the Yankees.
“I think he has the confidence he’s going to make them, we do as well,” Fiorito said. “He’s out there trying to make plays and help us win.”
