You can understand if Yankees manager Aaron Boone, or any MLB skipper, has to deflect a question or answer it in a round-about way to protect one of his players.
The key is in how you do that, though, and Saturday night, after watching Aroldis Chapman blow his first save of the season, one has to wonder exactly what Boone was seeing or thinking when he said this:
“I didn’t think he was unnerved, I thought he was very much in control of the situation. A lot of times when Aroldis is very aware of the running game like that, it quickens him up and shores him up mechanically. So I didn’t think he was unnerved.”
The situation Boone was discussing, of course, was Chapman seemingly speeding up his delivery in the ninth after Tim Anderson singled with one out in a 2-2 game, throwing over to first a few times before walking Yoan Moncada on a 3-2 pitch.
The problem, though, is that none of the six pitches to Moncada registered in the zone – Moncada swung at both strikes, fouling one off – and the next batter, Luis Robert, got a 3-1 count where none of the balls were close before taking a splitter that was in the bottom of the dead middle of the zone to right field, a chopper through the hole that scored Anderson with the game winner.
Boone thought Chapman was “aggressive” with his stuff and noted hoe Robert “didn’t hit it great but was able to get it through,” but the fact remains that Chapman looked rushed and threw seven of his final 11 pitches for balls, with two of the strikes balls out of the zone that were swung at.
Even if Chappy agrees that he wasn’t rattled by Anderson being on first.
“I wouldn’t say it was a distraction, but you do understand he’s a fast runner and aggressive on the bases, so you have to do your job there to keep him close and execute his pitches,” Chapman said through team translator Marlon Abreu. “I thought I did that well, but I ended up walking Moncada.”
And yes, the walk to Moncada is the one Chapman wishes he could have back, as Boone had also noted.
“A walk in that situation, you allow the winning run to move into scoring position, so anything with a fast runner on second, any ball put in play gives them a chance to score,” Chapman said. “Things got a little complicated there, but you have to give them credit because they got the job done.”
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