Chapman Impresses in Debut…
Aroldis Chapman‘s Major League debut was met with nothing short of giddiness and excitement from legions of baseball fans last night. As Chapman was considered one of the best international prospects in the game and had crazy stuff to boot, it makes sense that fans both inside and outside of Cincinnati were extremely excited to watch this phenom. Throw in the utterly ridiculous radar gun readings showing a 105 MPH fastball and there’s the most anticipated debut this side of Stephen Strasburg. Unsurprisingly, as soon as Chapman took the mound, Twitter went over capacity. Now that’s a buzz.
Chapman didn’t disappoint – he touched 102.7 on the gun, according to Brooks Baseball, and the TV gun for FSN Wisconsin had Chapman at 103 to his first batter faced, Johnathan Lucroy. That’s legitimately unique velocity, although I have to say that I’m actually more impressed by this pitch. (h/t Big League Stew)
Chapman struck out Lucroy with an 86 MPH slider, which showcased a whopping eight inches of horizontal break. The pitch didn’t hit the 90 MPH mark nor move a foot and a half as Reds’ catcher Ryan Hanigan claimed, but that’s still impressive. Indeed, that pitch may end up being the true knockout in Chapman’s arsenal. He threw it twice and drew swinging strikes both times, whereas the fastball was thrown six times and “only” drew one whiff. MLB hitters are certainly capable of making contact with high velocity pitches, and almost every strikeout artist relies on a secondary pitch as the hammer, with the notable exception of Matt Thornton.
Eight pitches obviously aren’t enough to fully gauge what we have in Aroldis Chapman, but it’s certainly enough to get excited about. His stuff is sheer spectacle, and he should be a viable weapon out of the Reds’ bullpen down the stretch.
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That’s a slider? Good lord.
What an awesome inning of baseball that was to watch. I was at the Strasburg debut and it was constantly electric, turned up to 11, but watching this game on TV, the atmosphere looked as if someone was doing magic… the crowd was hushed…whispering to each other “is it real?”
Totally effing sweet.
Why did the Reds not call him up before Sep 1? Aren’t they going to be kicking themselves when they don’t have this guy in the postseason?
August 31st comes before September 1st
Your face comes before September 1st.
Great comment
Holy crap.
fastball averaged 100.65 w/ 7.5″ of run… thats randy johnson circa ken griffey baseball
Best N64 Baseball game out there – Ken Griffey MLB!
103 mph is sickening…how long till his arm surgery (hoping it doesnt end that way for him)
Compared to his fastball (according to pitch/fx), it has like 16 inches of movement or so. Maybe that’s what he meant.
It’s the breaking stuff that blow up the elbow … not the fastball.
That said I hope he’s more like Nolan Ryan than Joel Zumaya
they didn’t need chapman before now they had all the tools they needed and they wanted to save him for a possible deep postseason run
im a model and a bit of a party animal but i love living in los angeles and meeting new and interesting people.. Kendra Wilkinson is my idol.