Yankees manager Aaron Boone gets creative with lineup as trade deadline looms

PHILADELPHIA — The lineup Aaron Boone fielded Monday night for the Yankees’ series opener against the Phillies was, in a word, different.

And by Tuesday night, it may well be even more different.

Giancarlo Stanton, who returned as the DH after a stint on the injured list with a hamstring strain, will be in Tuesday’s lineup, but other than Aaron Judge and Juan Soto (and probably Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe), everything should be considered on the table.

Tuesday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline looms and general manager Brian Cashman continued to work the phones Monday, as he has been deep into the night trying to improve his roster.

And, in the words of several rival executives in recent weeks, doing so “aggressively.”

The same word, incidentally, has been used to describe the Orioles, who entered Monday night 1 1⁄2 games ahead of the Yankees atop the AL East.

Both clubs, flawed as they may be in some areas, are considered the class of the AL, which collectively, in the words of several talent evaluators, is “really bad.”

And very much there for the taking, the primary reason for the two AL East powers’ aggressiveness.

What those talks yield from the Yankees’ perspective, of course, remains the question.

Cashman made one big splash over the weekend, acquiring the dynamic Jazz Chisholm from the Marlins. He started in centerfield on Sunday night and at third base for the first time in his professional career on Monday ight.

The Yankees believe Chisholm, a natural shortstop with a good arm, can make the transition because of his experience on the left side of the infield and his overall athleticism.

After Aaron Judge’s 38th homer of the season off Zack Wheeler in the top of the first gave Luis Gil a 1-0 lead (Judge later hit another, giving him 33 in his last 71 games), Chisholm successfully started a routine 5-4-3 double play in the bottom half, then hit his first homer as a Yankee in the second to make it 2-0.

What can’t be ignored is that the Yankees, as of Monday night, were a team with the highest of expectations starting players at the corners who are learning those infield positions on the fly. There’s Chisholm, whom Boone before Monday’s game prudently did not commit to as his everyday third baseman. Then there’s rookie Ben Rice, drafted as a catcher, who has had varying degrees of success at first since mid-June (Rice’s seventh homer of the season, a solo shot in the second, made it 3-0).

That’s two learn-as-they-go infielders coupled with a pitching staff that produces a lot of ground balls.

“Look, there’s definitely things we gotta work through from that standpoint,” Boone said Monday. “Concerned? Maybe a little bit, but the one thing I know is I feel like we’re a much better roster today than we were a day ago, two days ago. Getting Giancarlo back, bringing in a dynamic player like Jazz, makes for a better roster and definitely more upside. Not a complete product yet, but we’ll work hard to make sure we do the best we can with it.”

For that reason, bringing in more corner infield help can’t be ruled out. As is always the case, though, it will come down to teams matching up when it comes to exchanging players, whether they be major-leaguers, minor-leaguers or some combination of the two. Making things more challenging this year in that regard is a limited number of sellers with desired pieces combined with a handful of top-heavy teams with similar needs.

One such example is the starter and reliever market. The Yankees are borderline desperate for a lockdown bullpen piece or two, but as their rotation has shown signs of regression for well over a month, they’ve been engaged in the starter market, too.

“Right now, not thinking anything of it,” Nestor Cortes, Wednesday’s scheduled starter, said of his name coming up in various trade scenarios. “I have a job to do Wednesday and that’s my focus.”

Boone, who played 12 years in the big leagues, called it an “unsettling time for guys.”

“I look forward to getting through these next 24 hours [where] it’s like, ‘All right, here we go, boys, this is what we’ve got, let’s go get ’em,’ ” Boone said. “I don’t know [if there will be additional moves]. Anything’s possible, I would say.”