WEDNESDAY’S DOUBLEHEADER
Reds vs. Cubs, 12:35 p.m. (no TV) and 6:10 p.m. (FS Ohio), 700, 1410
Aroldis Chapman doesn’t betray much emotion on the mound. He caught grief after he did a double somersault after recording a save in 2012. Ever since, he’s been more likely to blow a save, which rarely happens, than crack a smile.
Chapman did show the smallest bit of excitement Sunday — a TV viewer would have had to pause the DVR to see it — when he struck out the final Cleveland Indians batter of the 10th inning. It was his fifth strikeout of the game and 500th of his career.
Chapman reached the milestone in 292 innings. No one in baseball history has ever done it faster.
“Anytime you’re writing history in 2015 — there’s a lot of baseball history — it’s a tremendous accomplishment,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “Especially if you really look back at his beginnings, everything it took for him to get to this environment in a professional organization, to try to understand the culture. There is so much beyond baseball he had to get through before he was able to comfortably get on a Major League mound and start to dial up the prolific strikeout numbers and success rate he’s had over the course of his years here in Cincinnati.”
Through Monday, Chapman had struck out 43 percent (502 of 1,165) of the batters he has faced in six seasons. That’s 43 percent.
Baseball’s all-time strikeouts leader, Nolan Ryan, struck out 25 percent of the batters he faced in his career. All-time saves leader Mariano Rivera struck out 23 percent.
The all-time leader in strikeouts per nine innings is Randy Johnson (10.6). Chapman doesn’t have enough innings to quality for the list but has struck out 15.4 batters per nine innings in six seasons.
After Chapman threw two scoreless innings Sunday and a career-high 44 pitches and followed that with a perfect ninth inning Monday, right fielder Jay Bruce said Chapman is from another planet.
Catcher Tucker Barnhart called Champman’s strikeout rate absurd.
“I was just in the video room,” Barnhart said minutes after the Reds beat the Cubs 5-4 Monday, “and that was the best slider I’ve ever caught from him, the one he threw (Anthony) Rizzo in the ninth. He’s awesome. Every single night, it’s 100, 101, 102, regardless of whether the guy threw two innings the day before. He’s a special guy.”
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