Baseball Beginnings

Posted By John Klima on January 2, 2010

“Swish” was Bob Thurman’s nickname, long before it was a shoe logo. Thurman was a left-handed hitting outfielder and pitcher who played for the Homestead Grays in the last Negro League World Series in 1948. When he signed with the Kansas City Monarchs and eventually found his way to the major leagues with the Cincinnati Reds, he had changed his age more than his socks.

 “I have had my age put back so many times,” an amused and demurring Thurman wrote, “I can’t remember my real age.”

There is humor in history, but a lesson to be learned for today’s Major League teams that pursue Cuban left-hander Aroldis Chapman. 

I have no doubt that Chapman is a definite prospect and will be an immediate major league contributor. But were I a major league owner spending $15 million per season on someone who has never thrown a professional pitch, I would want to know and understand all the risks as well as the rewards.

I would want to consider all the factors and not consider an unsolicited dossier on the player my sole source of information.

Like Bob Thurman, the teams that pursue Chapman today must study more than the scouting reports.

The first question is a number, and not the one on the contract.

Age discrimination in baseball is a way of life, so you can’t blame Chapman if he tries to buck the system by playing it. This is the first of several key risk factors.

No matter what kind of documentation is involved, age is always something that can be manipulated. It doesn’t mean Chapman’s not immediate help for the team that signs him, but it does mean that predicting the duration of his effectiveness is an expensive question mark.

Purchasing a pitcher in this framework means that a club has very little ability to retrace a player’s amateur career. It means that projection scouting and statistical analysis can’t achieve either’s goal of creating a top-end model of what this guy might be. We can never know all the variables of purchasing a Cuban pitcher.

Health.

You have no idea how many games the guy has thrown. You have no idea how many innings are on his arm. If there are 300-pitch outings in his background, you won’t know about it. You can have medical records – if you can get those from Cuba – and he can be clean as a whistle, but you have no idea what this guy has or hasn’t put in his body at whatever age.

Workload.

You have to wager that his athleticism and physiology will allow him to be the kind of guy who gets better with more work and won’t break down.

You don’t know how the guy will respond to a five-man rotation and the bullpen lurking over his shoulder. Chapman grew up in a baseball culture where a starting pitcher considers coming out of a game as an insult to their ability and manhood. Pitchers aren’t babied in the Caribbean the way they are in the States, but some pitchers don’t respond well to less work. They respond well to more work.

This isolates another risk factor — how Chapman will be handled.

The team that signs Chapman will inevitably protect their investment with zealous pitch counts and stringent work schedules, but his new team should pay as much attention to Chapman as an individual pitcher as it pays to its individual pitching needs.

Protecting a pitcher like this may in fact be abusing him. If Chapman’s arm action really works for him in the long run, and allows him to absorb deep outings, then let him pitch his way in and out of trouble. Let him be the horse you are paying him to be.

Every pitcher is different. Don’t take a guy who grew up where pitch counts are considered stupid and cram him into a formulaic model where he must be done after a pre-determined amount of pitches. Pay attention to what he responds to and use it to your advantage. Discover if individuality is an asset.

If Chapman really is as loose and athletic as he looks, let him go deep into games. Don’t destroy his arm, but let him get the most out of his body.

Chapman may be the kind of pitcher who gets looser as he gets deeper in a game. I recall watching Jose Contreras working in middle-relief for the Rockies against the Dodgers in September. He was throwing the ball better the deeper he went, but Jim Tracy pulled him in favor of set bullpen roles. He traded in a pitcher throwing the ball very well to go with the format, and he lost a key game in a playoff chase. Don’t pay for the horse and then jump off before the stretch.

Chapman should take as much money as he can, because the greatest risk he faces in American baseball might not be self-created.

It’s going to be how he is handled, and if the team that signs him isn’t creative and brave enough to let this pitcher’s talent and physiology determine his own results, then they will risk diminishing their own investment.

Gamesmanship.

You know about his stuff, but you also don’t know how he will respond to pitching against Albert Pujols with runners on first and third and nobody out. You have no idea about his composure or stability. You have no idea how this guy will respond to the immediate pressure of being an instant No. 1 starter in the major leagues. You have no idea how Chapman will respond when he learns that big league hitters don’t care how hard you throw if you can’t put it where they can’t pull the trigger. You have no idea what he will do when he has to pitch instead of throw.

If you throw him into a large media market, you have no idea how he will adjust to the media and the off-the-field distractions. You have no idea how he will respond to immediate wealth. You have no idea how he will deal with failure on a large scale. You have to hope his accelerated acculturation won’t diminish his returns.

These are questions any smart team must ask itself when it invests any substantial amount of money on an untested player. But these are questions you can more easily research and predict with an American high school or college pitcher, a Japanese pro, or a Latin American player, as long as you have the right contacts.

But Cuba is a different ballgame. The past is easier to hide. There is a reason that John McGraw once wanted to smuggle star African-American pitcher John Donaldson onto the New York Giants by going through Cuba.

The radar gun can be a crutch. It can trick you because it cannot tell you everything you need to know. The team that signs Chapman should invest in player research. You should want to know what you are buying. Would you research a company before you invested in it? Why wouldn’t you pay the same diligence to a human investment? To avoid a Swish, you had better study every aspect and not only a bullpen session. You must study the potential risks as fervently as the potential rewards. 

Read Arolidis Chapman Scouting Report

More Cincinnati Reds prospects:
Read Mike Leake Q&A
Read Mike Leake Scouting Report
Read updated Mike Leake Scouting Report
Watch Mike Leake Scouting Video
Read Who Will Be the Better Pro: Stephen Strasburg or Mike Leake?
Read Brad Boxberger Scouting Report
Watch Brad Boxberger Scouting Video
Read Chris Heisey Scouting Report
Read Yonder Alonso Scouting Report

Categories: Baseball Beginnings Exclusives
Tags: Aroldis Chapman, Cincinnati Reds