A little more than two years ago, Vladimir Guerrero Jr and Aroldis Chapman engaged in a batter/pitcher matchup for the ages. The precocious Guerrero, just 20-years old and at the highest point of his rookie season, battled one of the greatest relievers the game has ever seen in a great, high leverage tilt.
Chapman had the edge that night but the Chapman of 2021 is a little bit different than the one toeing the rubber for the Yankees in August 2019. He might look the same, sweat pouring off his brow with his professional wrestler muscles1 hidden beneath a waterlogged compression shirt just like always, but there’s something different about Chapman these days.
Baseball’s sticky stuff ban hit a number of players hard. In another situation, it would be easy to empathize with a pitcher who is the true edge case, one of the most physically bewildering players the game has ever seen, a player who, for the better part of a decade, has thrown baseballs harder and better than anyone else in history.
To adapt your max efforts ways in real time, to relearn how to stretch your 99th percentile body to produce at unprecedented results on the fly and to discover the limits of what your body can do during games that matter, that’s hard. You can’t help but feel for a person forced into such a situation without warning or time to prepare.
But, as luck would have it, you don’t need to feel a single goddamn thing for Aroldis Chapman. Were you to compile a list of the people deserving of sympathy or even just a base level of empathy in or around baseball, Chapman’s name would be somewhere towards the bottom.
So when he struggles with his command while simultaneously losing velocity as he gropes around to find the feel for his offspeed stuff, eventually grooving a fastball that Vlad Jr hits so hard as to tear a hole in the fabric of reality, it’s okay to celebrate. It’s okay to celebrate at the expense of Chapman however feels right to you.
The ball left Vlad Jr’s bat at 114 ungodly miles per hour and reached the seats in less time than it took for Yankees’ fans to turn on Chapman. It was a beautiful scene and the groan from the sparse Yankees Stadium crowd was delightful.
Vlad Jr also added a single and a walk. Since he bottomed out in Detroit, with his season OPS slipping to .9922, he’s gone 18 for 41 with five home runs, four walks and three strikeouts. His season OPS is back up to 1.016. He leads the American League with a .320 average. He leads the AL in on base percentage, too. He sits third in home runs and fourth in RBI. His Statcast page still looks like this:
All while pissing all over the hopes and dreams of Yankees fans, the majority of which are unable to hope or dream for anything other than a World Series title. It’s an ideal situation, really. Even if the Blue Jays playoff push ultimately falls a little short, daydreaming about a frustrated Yankees reliever sitting at his locker, trying to figure out What Comes Next, is enough to warm me during the cold winter to come.
Aroldis Chapman is truly enormous, an absolute freak in every way. Fuck him
The horror!
Great as always, GROF. And yes, fuck Chapman.