Anthony Rizzo acknowledges uncertain future before World Series Game 4: 'I love being a Yankee'

NEW YORK — Anthony Rizzo knows there is uncertainty surrounding his Yankees future.

Rizzo’s contract features a $17 million club option with a $6 million buyout for 2025. If the Yankees decide to decline the option, the 35-year-old first baseman would become a free agent this offseason.

So when Rizzo was asked before Game 4 of the World Series if he had considered he might be playing in his final game as a Yankee a few hours later, the veteran acknowledged that possibility.

“I love playing here,” Rizzo said Tuesday. “I love being a Yankee. I love what comes with it. I love the standard that has been set here from all the generations, the great Yankees in the past. Yeah, this could very well be. I’m a realist. I’m not naive to it. But I think all that will shape out when the time is right.”

The Yankees acquired Rizzo from the Chicago Cubs before the 2021 trade deadline, then re-signed him before the 2023 season to a two-year, $34 million contract with the club option.

Rizzo owns a .234 average, 60 home runs and 172 RBIs in 370 regular-season games with the Yankees, and he matched a career high with 32 homers in 2022.

But his last two seasons have been derailed by injuries. Rizzo missed the final two months of 2023 with post-concussion syndrome, a diagnosis he received about two months after he was involved in a first-base collision that coincided with the start of a lengthy slump.

Rizzo also missed more than two months this season after another first-base collision left him with a fractured forearm. He then suffered two broken fingers on his right hand when he was hit by a pitch on Sept. 28 on the second-to-last day of the regular season. He finished the season with a .224 average and eight home runs in 337 at-bats.

Rizzo missed the ALDS due to the injury to his non-throwing hand, but he returned to the Yankees’ lineup for the ALCS against the Guardians and for the World Series against the Dodgers.

“He’s such a gamer,” manager Aaron Boone said Tuesday of Rizzo. “Used the word a lot the last couple days: His moxie, with what he’s been through on the injury front the last couple of years, and then obviously going through and playing with a broken hand and playing so well.

“He’s just one of the beloved guys in [the clubhouse]. We’ve talked about the closeness of this group, and he is one of the leaders of that.”

Rizzo’s leadership has again been on display in the World Series. After a Game 2 loss in Los Angeles put the Yankees in a 2-0 deficit, Rizzo called a team meeting before Game 3, which Fox’s Tom Verducci first reported on Monday night’s game broadcast.

“It was pretty quick, pretty brief, to the point, just to tell the guys how much I love them and whatnot,” Rizzo said Tuesday of that meeting.

It was akin to Rizzo calling a team meeting before Game 5 of the 2016 World Series as a member of the Chicago Cubs, who trailed 3-1 to Cleveland. Those curse-breaking Cubs reeled off three consecutive wins to claim the franchise’s first World Series title in 108 years.

This year’s meeting didn’t yield the same result, however, as the Yankees lost Game 3 to the Dodgers, putting them in a 3-0 hole in the best-of-seven series.

“We have been a very good team,” Rizzo said Tuesday. “We do have a lot of talent, but the way we’ve come together has been very special to me.”