Aroldis Chapman Is Coming To The Sox, Dammit

Craig Breslow’s first “big” move of the offseason is shite. There. I said it.

I’d like to be focusing on Juan Soto this week. You’ve heard that he’s allegedly making up his mind in the next few days. But then the Red Sox go and sign Aroldis Chapman of all people and deliver a sucker punch to fans. Now I’m taking a couple of stagger steps, putting my hands on my knees, and trying to catch my breath while managing—barely—to not throw up.

I didn’t have this on my bingo card, not even a little.

I’m not the only one who was stunned. There was general uproar from Red Sox Nation. Our interoffice comments here at OTM included:

• Musings on the fact that Connor Wong (a poor framer and blocker) isn’t up to the task of catching Chapman’s particular brand of out-of-control heat
• Noting Chapman’s unimpressive stats at Fenway
• I’m paraphrasing here, but something along the lines of, can we please not give money to disgusting people
• Wondering how the front office came away no wiser after the bad PR that arose from the Matt Dermody situation two years ago (or Jarren Duran this season, for that matter)
• And some other strong feelings that I won’t air here

Dermody’s behavior was gross. Duran’s was gross. But Chapman’s was grosser, and could have been deadly. Let’s take a look at the outcomes of this bad behavior and the subsequent debacles.

Dermody was let go right after the game, at the height of the uproar. But he wasn’t very good anyway, and that was probably the plan from the beginning due to needing roster space for Adam Duvall’s return from injury.

Duran was suspended for only two games, in keeping with MLB precedent from 2017 (not accounting for inflation, or more accurately, an updated policy that shows MLB is concerned about such incidents). Duran is a good ballplayer but also, he was already on our team. I wouldn’t expect he would be let go, and that punishment wouldn’t fit the crime anyway.

It’s one thing to allow things to settle down and then move on. It’s another thing to recruit and sign someone like Chapman, especially when the Sox had specifically quashed a deal to acquire him in 2015 based on this same issue.

I wasn’t aware that the Sox were that close to signing Chapman in 2015 but I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that decision to move on. I’m not sure why signing him seems like a good deal now. If anything, it’s probably worse. Consider:

• Chapman is nine years older now, and will turn 37 during spring training. That’s a red flag all on its own.
• What our writers noted about our catching situation is true. I’m not sure our catching team has the ability to handle him, in terms of his control. Will New Guy Seby Zavala, who’s significantly better than Wong at framing and blocking, become Chapman’s personal catcher? That doesn’t work with a reliever, and Zavala’s unlikely to even make the roster anyway.
• But even more than that, Chapman issues a lot of walks (it’s that control, see). Can our infield defense handle the extra baserunners? I’m not so sure. It’s certainly a gamble.

So what makes this incomprehensible to me is that this signing isn’t even a good fit for our team! The argument that he’s so good that we can overlook what he’s done (which has been used by many a coach, general manager, and star athlete before now) doesn’t add up in this case. It might not even be a good baseball move, on the merits. And I’ve never used that term so loosely before in my life. What merits?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about second chances…but couldn’t he get his second chance (or fourth, or whatever this is) from anyone else? And there wasn’t any other reliever who made sense for the Sox?

I ran across this interesting piece, written nine years ago, not that long after the domestic abuse came to light. The title really says it all: “Yankees trade for Aroldis Chapman, sell their souls in the name of moneyball.” And that’s from a Yankees fan blog. The sentiment hasn’t aged at all and is still relevant to 2024’s signing by the Red Sox. But for context, the Yankees had just signed Chapman after the Dodgers backed out of a trade (I didn’t know that either). The author goes into the economics of the deal, pointing out that it was Chapman’s undesirability from a public relations standpoint that made the Reds decide to move him in the first place—even though he was at the absolute top of his game. That undesirability drove down his value to the point where he became affordable, and that’s when the Yankees stepped up. The author asks, “At what point do I stop feeling dirty about it?”

I don’t think I’ve ever admired a Yankees fan so much.

Many people are tying Chapman’s signing to the Sox pursuit of Juan Soto. In other words, the theory goes, we settled in order to save money that we might then use on Soto. Fair enough argument. We’ll see if that’s indeed even the case. I’m not convinced it is. But even if it were, why does this feel to me like consigning a creepy, aging portrait with a life of its own to the attic? Like a deal with the devil?

Chapman’s own social media post about the signing, a dim photo of him in a low-ceilinged, kind of cluttered room, gives me serious Dorian Gray vibes. It doesn’t look like his dog wants to be involved in any of this, either. If he weren’t hanging onto that poor thing, do you think it would even be by his side?

I’ve said for a long time that it’s sometimes uncomfortably tough, as a woman, to love baseball. But lots of men are equally disappointed and outraged here. That’s the one bright spot for me; I’m not the only one who feels like something is deeply wrong with this situation. Our internal communications proved that, let alone social media.

MLB has sure made it difficult sometimes to maintain my fandom and hold my head high. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance over being a gay, female baseball fan, let me tell you. You’ve got to silo a lot of shit.

But MLB isn’t involved here. It’s my own team. For the Sox, my beloved Sox, to betray me in this cheap fashion…that really hurts.

I usually love a Cubs/Red Sox crossover, but to quote a different player who wore both uniforms: “Yuck.”