Aroldis Chapman Adds This Badly Needed Element To Red Sox Bullpen

The Red Sox reportedly have agreed to terms with left-handed reliever Aroldis Chapman to bolster their bullpen. The name might raise some eyebrows, but the move itself should surprise no one.

That’s because chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said he was going to do it.

Breslow might not have said outwardly that the Red Sox would specifically target the flame-throwing Chapman. However, Boston’s baseball boss laid out his relief retooling rubric earlier in the offseason, and Chapman checked all the boxes.

“We’ve seen it year after year in the playoffs. Guys who can generate swings and misses, whether that’s big velocity or dominant breaking balls, those guys are successful, especially in the postseason,” Breslow told reporters at the GM meetings in November, per MLB.com. “So I think we’re going to look to add some raw stuff. Someone we can count on to come in to put out a rally or to close out games or to pitch the back end of a game, who can generate some swings and misses in the strike zone.”

Breslow even said they’d look to add a left-hander.

There might not be any left-handed relievers more synonymous with “raw stuff” in the last 20 years than Chapman. The 36-year-old’s best days are behind him. He hasn’t earned an All-Star Game selection since 2021, and he’s more than a decade removed from a 2012 campaign in which he struck out 122 of the 276 batters he faced on his way to a top-10 finish in National League Cy Young Award voting.

That being said, he still represents a significant upgrade for a Red Sox bullpen that almost certainly will also lose Kenley Jansen. Even with Jansen, Red Sox relievers generated a swing-and-miss rate of 10.3; only three teams had a lower rate. Chapman, meanwhile, generated a 13.3% swing-and-miss rate, a number that still represented a dropoff from his career rate (16.4%).

The velocity is a big reason for that. Chapman might not average triple digits as he did in Cincinnati, but his average four-seam fastball still clocked in at 97.8 mph last season, and his “sinker,” which he used 27% of the time, still got up there at a cool 99.9 mph (the only time it dipped below triple digits since 2018). With all due respect to Brennan Bernardino, Chapman brings an element the Red Sox haven’t had in a long time — if ever.

Recently added journeyman reliever Justin Wilson addresses the same sorts of needs (albeit to a far lesser extent).

The Red Sox have made the bullpen a priority to start the winter, and while other — far bigger — dominoes are still left to fall, Boston should be better in the back end when 2025 rolls around.