Aroldis Chapman simply doesn’t make sense.
The arm action of throwing a baseball is unnatural. It’s why pitchers, who usually are trying to throw at the highest intensity out of this unnatural motion, get injured so much.
Very few humans have ever thrown a baseball with the ferocity of Chapman’s left arm.
And yet, no major injuries.
Chapman’s left arm has carried him through 16 MLB seasons and it brought him to closing out his former team, the New York Yankees, on Tuesday night in Yankee Stadium for the Boston Red Sox.
Social media spent a bit of time marveling at it all afterward.
“Aroldis Chapman has been throwing triple digit fastballs in MLB for 16 years. He has missed more games due to facial fractures and infected tattoos than arm injuries,” wrote one account on X.
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Chapman was a highly touted prospect when he arrived from Cuba in the Cincinnati Reds organization, and he’s lived up to that.
The 37-year old has been mostly dominant in all but one or two of his big league seasons.
This one may have been his best yet. Chapman put up a 1.17 ERA and had a stretch where he had set down more consecutive batters without a hit than would happen in a no-hitter for a starter.
The strikeout pitch still works, too, with 85 in 61.1 innings in the regular season.
Somehow, Chapman’s flamethrower has never turned off or even wavered.
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