The winners of the Aroldis Chapman sweepstakes are the Cincinnati Reds! For those of you who don't know, Aroldis Chapman is the fireballing young LHP who recently defected from Cuba after making a name for himself in the World Baseball Classic. This signing is somewhat surprising in that it was widely assumed that the $$$ it would take to sign him would eliminate all but a few high revenue teams from consideration, and Cincinnati, in particular, was widely rumored to be looking to downsize their payroll let alone make a high profile free agent signing.
The concensus on Chapman seems to be that he is breathtakingly talented, but still a bit raw with difficulty controlling his exceptional stuff. That stuff includes a fastball that sits in the mid-high 90's and has reportedly touched 102 MPH! He also has a breaking pitch and changeup that are less exceptional. I looked up some videos of him pitching on youtube.com. He's a tall gangly kid who looks like he can fill out his frame a bit more. His windup and delivery remind me most of CC Sabathia. I saw him throw the fastball both up in the zone and at the knees with a lot of movement, mostly armside run. His breaking pitch was kind of flat and sweeping, I guess you would call it a slurve, and I saw several batters reaching for offspeed stuff, so he apparently does have some deception going with that.
The contract is intriguing, a MLB deal for 6 years, $30M, heavily backloaded with deferred money out to 10 years. The MLB contract means he immediately goes on the 40 man MLB roster. He can still be sent to the minors, but he has to stick with the 25 man roster in the 4'th year with the organization. If it takes him 3 years to reach the major leagues, it will be a very bad deal for the Reds as they will only have him 3 more seasons in which an ordinary prospect would not be eligible for arbitration and thus paid <$1 M/yr. The Reds are obviously counting on him pitching in Cincinnati no later than the beginning of the 2011 season and thus using the contract to pay for his arbitration years. The Reds have shown a willingness to be aggressive with young fireballing pitchers in Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez, so don't be surprised his Chapman is in their starting rotation come April.
Fantasy Impact: If you are in a deep keeper league, Chapman is a player you will want to consider immediately, although not as one of your top 2 or 3 pitchers. If you are in a more shallow keeper league, or a year-to-year league, you will want to moniter him very closely. If it looks like he will open the season in Cincinnati, he is eminently draftable. If he goes to the minors, monitor his progress closely and pick him up as soon as it looks like he might get called up.
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