BOSTON _ It took Aroldis Chapman almost an hour to speak to reporters after another disastrous outing Friday night, which should've given him enough time to grapple with what's become the Yankees' most troubling issue _ how a fearsome reliever with a 100-mph fastball is no longer generating swings and misses.
Chapman wasn't solely responsible for the Bombers' 9-6 loss to the Red Sox, but he nevertheless played a role in what was a killer setback in the standings. The Yankees had a 6-3 lead with nine outs to go, then watched helplessly as the bullpen _ their most bankable asset _ let it get away.
The real culprit was Tommy Kahnle, who allowed four of the six batters he faced to reach base in the seventh inning, including Mitch Moreland, whose two-run single gave Boston a 7-6 lead. The Yankees didn't know it yet, but they were about to fall five games behind in the East with 41 to go. The math is not in their favor.
But Kahnle's failure at least gave Chapman the chance to work a low-leverage eighth inning. Joe Girardi repeatedly said, "we've got to get (Chapman) right" and hoped acing the bottom of the Red Sox' lineup would be the start of a rebirth. But it didn't turn out that way.
Despite averaging 100.1 mph, the Cuban left-hander immediately allowed a rocket of a base hit to Rafael Devers, who'd launched a ninth-inning home run off Chapman on Sunday night at Yankee Stadium. Devers, again, had no trouble with Chapman's fastball and set the tone for the ensuing rally. The first three Sox hitters reached base including Jackie Bradley, who ripped a two-run that put the game out of reach.
More troubling, however, was the ease in which Boston's hitters made contact. Of Chapman's 23 pitches, only one generated a swing and miss. That's a shocking downturn for baseball's hardest thrower, who admits he has no explanation. "It's hard to pinpoint because I feel fine physically," he said through an interpreter. Although the closer said he's been in slumps before, he added, "this is the hardest one."
The fact Chapman waited so long to address the media only added to the surreal setting of his after-midnight interview. The Yankees had all showered, changed and hopped on the team bus back to the headquarters hotel. The visiting clubhouse equipment manager had finished cleaning up, Joe Girardi was fully dressed and ready to bolt and even the Yankees' security personnel seemed ready to call it a night.
So there stood Chapman, alone in every sense, almost certainly demoted to the eighth inning for the foreseeable future. When asked if Chapman could be trusted in the ninth inning for rest of the weekend in Fenway, Girardi cryptically said, "I'll sleep on everything and talk about it (Saturday)."
The good news is that the Bombers still have two reliable and experienced assets in Dellin Betances and David Robertson. But losing Chapman nevertheless leaves a void the Yankees never saw coming, and creates a liability down the stretch. The odds of catching the Sox are diminishing rapidly. They've got Chris Sale Saturday, who could widen Boston's lead to six games. But replacing the pursuit of the East's top spot with hosting the wild card game is just as critical to the Yankees.
The question is how long it'll take for Chapman to regain what made him special _ not just lighting up the radar gun but instilling fear in hitters who dreaded even stepping into the batter's box. The Yankees wonder if poor location is what's undermining Chapman, but at 100-mph, should that really matter?
Girardi makes a salient point when he says, "a hundred isn't so rare anymore. You see even starting pitchers throw that." If that's what's behind Chapman vulnerability, that his triple-digit stuff suddenly looks like everyone else's, then it opens up a secondary discussion of what to do about it.
Find a second pitch? Chapman throws a slider, sort of, but it mostly just spins and fools no one. The damning hit he surrendered to Bradley was off _ you guessed it _ a slider that cut the plate in half. The Fenway crowd roared as the Sox scored their eighth and ninth runs, having already spent the inning taunting the struggling left-hander with a sing-songy "Chap-man...Chap-man."
Red Sox Nation has apparently found its new enemy, which may have sufficiently freaked Chapman out to the point where he preferred not to discuss it. He almost certainly won't be on the mound Saturday, but let's see where he fits on Sunday's series finale.
By then we'll know if the Yankees should affect a full-scale recalculation for October. In what started out as a showdown weekend on Yawkey Way could end with a whimper _ a seven-game deficit by the time they leave for Detroit. That would quash any lingering notion of a miracle comeback against Boston and send the Yankees into the embrace of a one-game shoot out on October 3.
If the Bombers don't have Chapman and their bullpen straightened out by then, well, that's a question they'd rather not entertain. It's much too dark.
