Aroldis Chapman throws a baseball faster than anyone ever recorded in the history of Major League Baseball. It’s debatable if this is something to gloat about.
Every discussion of Chapman (for his on the field exploits, at least) focuses on his ability to break 100mph on the radar gun. A little over a week ago he tied his own record by hitting 105.1mph.
It was a bad pitch that was tracking for the umpire’s foot. He’d previously hit 105 in 2010 with a pitch that was 12 inches off the plate and then did it again a year later while almost plunking Andrew McCutchen. While those wild rockets undoubtedly left the batters feeling uneasy at the plate, lauding them as historic accomplishments isn’t far removed from applauding a guy who hits a drive 400 yards and two fairways over.
Characterizing Chapman as nothing but a speed guy is a discredit to his pitching abilities. In baseball and most every other sport, pure speed by individual athletes is overrated. Overall team speed, when mixed with other attributes like skill and toughness, provides a huge and undeniable advantage. But athletes whose game is only speed? They usually impress no one but scouts and GMs.
Look at Chapman’s former teammate on the Reds, outfielder Billy Hamilton. Three seasons into his major league career and we know that Hamilton is very fast and also very bad at baseball. Yet because of his ability to move his legs at a lightning pace, the Reds keep putting him and his .291 career OBP at the top of their lineup. Meanwhile, players with more than one major league tool, players that could actually help Cincinnati win some games, sit the bench or rot in the minors.
Countless track stars have had brief and unsuccessful tryouts as NFL wide receivers. Al Davis killed a generation of Raiders football by thinking running fast in a straight line was all that was needed for NFL greatness. We’ve all heard for more than a decade about Jay Cutler’s arm strength, but the Bears would probably take a quarterback who didn’t have a cannon arm as long as the footballs he threw regularly landed in the hands of people wearing the same uniform.
The best players in every sport are not the best because of speed alone. Lionel Messi succeeds more with quickness, change of pace and ball skills than blistering speed. Sidney Crosby can skate, but his best attributes are his vision and passing ability. LeBron can most definitely run, as Andre Iguodala well knows, but he couldn’t chase down a player like John Wall.
Chapman is maybe the best reliever in baseball. But it’s not because he can throw 105. Any major league hitter will tell you that they can square up a fastball of any speed if it doesn’t move. Chapman is dominant because he can throw in the high 90s with accuracy and movement. It’s because he occasionally works in a changeup that’s 15mph slower than his heater. It’s because he can throw a slider that looks like this.
Chapman is a complete pitcher. If you want to speak ill of the man, do so. But don’t do it by calling him a flamethrower.
Video of the Week
The Diamondbacks are having an awful season. Expected by many to contend in the National League West, they’re in last place and 17 games behind the Giants. Yet you have to admire their resilience. Even in the midst of another loss, they can find time to fit in celebratory chest-bumps during normal game play.
Behold the rare and goofy infield collision from last night: https://t.co/tE0sKJl4Y2 pic.twitter.com/xPmoq98q8h
— Cut4 (@Cut4) July 26, 2016
Quote of the week
This is such a fleeting game. It’s so unforgiving. You’re never settled. You’ve never got it. You’ve never figured it out. It’s like a puzzle that never has all the pieces to it. You might get close and feel pretty good about your progress, but you never are going to have the puzzle put together - Jay Bruce, Cincinnati Reds outfielder, on the difficulty of baseball.
The puzzle analogy is good, but maybe not one that will resonate with the demographic baseball needs to do a better job of attracting. Bruce needs some media training. He should have said: “This is such a fleeting game. You never figure it out. It’s like Pokemon Go. You can never catch them all.”
Who’s closer to victory: Donald Trump or the Cubs?
With the acquisition of Chapman addressing their bullpen issues, the Cubs are now even heavier favorites to win the National League. Meanwhile, Trump became the official Republican nominee for president last week and then took the lead in recent national polls thanks to the bump from his party’s convention. We’re looking at the very real possibility of Chapman winning a championship this fall and Trump the presidency. But keep your head up. Good things will probably happen to good people, too.
How did the kids piss off Goose Gossage this week?
No kids pissed off Goose this week. In fact, dozens of kids got up-close views of baseball’s code being enforced. At Camp Day at Jackie Robinson Park in Daytona Beach, Florida, last Wednesday and the children that filled the stadium were treated to a ninth-inning brawl between the Jupiter Hammerheads and the Daytona Tortugas.
SLATER SCOOP: Exclusive video, details of Camp Day brawl for Marlins, Reds Single-A teams. https://t.co/RAaeCeAn00 pic.twitter.com/x3qcqdIikD
— Andy Slater (@AndySlater) July 26, 2016
The Daytona Beach News-Journal broke down the pugilistic action thusly:
“After Gavin LaValley was hit with the first pitch of his at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, tempers flared from the Dayton dugout. Players let their feelings be heard, and Tortugas manager Eli Marrero began jawing with umpires. Shouting could be heard from Jupiter’s dugout, Hammerheads manager Randy Ready came out and Marrero eventually threw a punch at Ready. Benches cleared, and several fights broke out across the diamond for the next three minutes or so. It took about 20 minutes for the umpires to sort everything out before play resumed.”
What a valuable 20 minutes of learning about baseball’s code for the camp children. And how special that the whole incident escalated on a punch thrown by Tortugas manager Eli Marrero, a man who spent the first 11 years of his professional baseball career in the St Louis Cardinals organization, one of the true guardians of the sport’s unwritten rules. It was a great day in baseball history and an even greater day for America’s children.
Nine things In order
1) Thursday may be Chris Sale’s last start in a White Sox uniform, regular or throwback. He hasn’t backed off his reasoning for cutting up the team’s 1976 throwbacks before his last scheduled start, insisting the organization was putting a promotion over making players comfortable. “For them to put business over winning, that’s when I lost it,” he maintains. Fine, but if Sale thinks the White Sox are making money selling jerseys this ugly, he is mistaken.
More Classic Moments In Chicago #WhiteSox Uniform History: Love them, hate them...it's THE SHORTS! (1976) #Veeck pic.twitter.com/A1kZU9A4kz
— Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) July 24, 2016
No one is spending $358.99 on a garment that ugly. And if they are, the White Sox should try to trade these fans before the deadline.
2) In other exciting uniform news, Yasiel Puig has been informed by MLB that he will be fined $5,000 if he wears these Vin Scully cleats again.
These Vin Scully cleats are 😍. pic.twitter.com/TQ3Im1NJ4e
— MLB (@MLB) July 17, 2016
The league says they do not comply with rules stating that shoes must match the team’s uniform colors. The shoes didn’t comply because of the color orange. That means Puig can still honor Scully or almost anyone else on his shoes outside of Donald Trump.
3) The Detroit Tigers play a new version of Rock, Paper, Scissors in which the losing player gets bludgeoned in the head with an empty water cooler jug.
It looks like a lot of fun. It’s also evidence of why a 14-year old boy like Drake LaRoche can feel very comfortable with the culture of a major league locker room.
4) Ichiro now sits just three hits short of 3,000 for his MLB career and, with his team’s next four games at Marlins Park, the milestone could very well come at home. It will be a memorable moment in franchise history. Not so much for the 3,000 hits. The vast majority of Ichiro’s hits came with Seattle. But because it could be the first time in the history of Marlins Man that he has reason to attend a Marlins game.
5) Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage has earned a reputation for being able to take most any broken, struggling pitcher and turn him into an effective and productive part of Pittsburgh’s staff. Then this year happened. Jon Niese, acquired from the Mets for Neil Walker, put up a 5.13 ERA before being demoted to the bullpen three weeks ago. Former reclamation project Francisco Liriano has a 5.38 ERA, his worst since joining the Pirates in 2013. Former All-Star Jeff Locke has a 5.43 ERA. Juan Nicasio, brought in from the Rockies before the season, had a 5.83 ERA when he was dropped from the rotation in mid-June. Searage’s methods are not working this year. He’s no longer the Pitcher Whisperer. If anything, he’s now the Pitcher Mutterer: “Why the hell did you throw that pitch right over the middle of the plate at 86mph?”
6) James Shields is good again. After starting the season strong, he got rocked through most of May and June, giving up three or more runs in seven of nine games. But in the last month, the White Sox starter has reverted right back to the pitcher who was one of the best in the game for the last four years. I don’t believe in divine intervention in sports. But I will say this: God briefly robbing James Shields of his abilities so he could throw a meatball that Bartolo Colon would hit for a home run and bring joy to millions is the kind of thing an all-loving guy in a cloud might do.
7) Aroldis Chapman’s first Cubs media session didn’t go particularly well, in part because his translator flubbed some of what the reliever meant. In fairness to Chapman, the Cubs should seriously look into hiring a better Spanish interpreter. Or just bring Sammy Sosa back and task him with speaking for Chapman, only have him use his Congressional testimony strategy again and pretend he doesn’t understand English. “Does Aroldis feel remorse? I’m sorry, I don’t know what any of those words mean. OK, that’s all the time we have for today.”
8) As the non-waiver trade deadline approaches, one helpful tip: your favorite team’s prospects aren’t as good as you think they are. For example, that Single-A pitcher who has a solid xFIP this year? He’s probably not going to become the next Clayton Kershaw. I’m sorry. It’s likely he doesn’t even develop into a major league regular. If your team can get a half-decent reliever for him that can possibly help your major league team this year, it’s a pretty good deal. So concludes this column and my analysis on most of the deadline deals.
9) Actually, one more thing: what’s the point of even making any trade deadline deals this July? It’s an even year, so it’s been pre-ordained that the Giants will win the World Series. Every other team is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
