Aroldis Chapman Likes it Fast!

Will Aroldis Chapman be a starter or reliever in 2013?

When Aroldis Chapman got his 6th speeding ticket for going 93 mph, it was after his Kentucky driver’s license had already been taken away. The judge let it slide I’m assuming because he realized that 93 miles per hour is simply a changeup for Chapman.

It’s his fastball that’s really fast. I was watching him pitch on TV and I personally clocked it at 123 mph. Don’t bother fact checking that. Just believe me. The speed you can fact check is 105.1 mph, which was the fastest pitch ever recorded by Major League Baseball and thrown by Chapman in 2010. While he commonly bumps up over 100, his four seamer sits at 98, and has a 33% whiff rate, which is just ridiculous.

While I joked about a changeup for Chapman, he really doesn’t have one. His second pitch is a wicked slider that comes in between 87 and 90 mph. Again, Chapman likes it fast.

But in order to transition from relief to a starter his fastball has been slowed down to 93 mph in order to stretch him out and to increase his control. With just two pitches – both now clocked between 87-93 – there isn’t much of a speed discrepancy to disrupt hitters’ timing. Conventional wisdom says the development of a third pitch (typically a changeup) is the key to Chapman’s success in the rotation. While Nolan Ryan survived with two pitches – a fastball and a curve – but it’s certainly the exception not to have a 3 pitch repertoire.

In a handful of innings this spring Chapman has thrown a couple changeups and one splitter, mixed into his usual fastballs and sliders. He already has great movement on those pitches and a splitter would drop heavy and late, which would give him a possible 3rd pitch and movement along another plane, which would allow him to just eliminate the changeup idea all together.

Why did I talk so much about the speed and movement of Chapman’s pitches? Because it’s key to his success in moving from a reliever to a starter, which has serious repercussions on his fantasy baseball value.

From the beginning I have been strongly against his move into the rotation. The Reds don’t need him there and he’s ridiculously good in the closer role. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken, and all that. And while I still think his move to the rotation is a bad idea, I have warmed to the idea that he might have success there, for a couple reasons:

1. After really researching the data above I’m more confident he’ll find that third pitch. Remember, his fastball and slider are so wicked good, he just needs to have an adequate third pitch that will keep hitters in their toes.
2. I think that’s he’s growing up as a person and putting seem off-the-field issues behind him. A Cuban defector, he has struggled to find a community that he can trust and can surround himself with, but things are better on this front. Sometimes we forget that these players are real humans and that clear headspace correlates with on-the-field success.

Last year I compared Chris Sale to C.J. Wilson (and his transition to the rotation) and predicted that Sale would be aces in the rotation. While I got that one right, there are just as many cases where being stretched out doesn’t yield favorable results. So it’s something to watch this spring.

I’m becoming more and more optimistic and will draft Chapman if he’s not being overvalued (I’d take him around the 100th player off the board). His downside is that he won’t pitch more than 140 innings or so even if stretched out, but the upside will be that he will still give you 150+ strikeouts in those 140 innings.

If you can get him after 100 players have gone off the board you wouldn’t need to be nervous that your 2 or 3rd fantasy pitcher is limited in innings, and you could feel real good if he indeed stays as closer, because there’s no concerns about his performance there. Just don’t be too fast yourself as you draft him, thinking that his heater will translate into fantasy baseball ace his first year as a starter.