Yes the Cincinnati Reds are the winner of the prized Cuban free agent lefty Aroldis Chapman sweepstakes. A small market team and not a big market team like the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees didn’t acquire him.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports first reported the Reds had agreed to a 6 year, $30 million deal with Chapman. It was later confirmed by many media sources and on Monday afternoon, the Reds made it official.
According to John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the deal is heavily backloaded with Chapman receiving just $1 million as his salary in 2010. The whole deal is spread out over a 10 year period and won’t tax the Reds budget until 2014.
Chapman will wear No. 54 and Walt Jocketty, the Reds GM, wasn’t sure if Chapman would start the season with the Reds. He explained the Reds involvement during the negotiations.
Jocketty said the team really got involved in a significant way to sign Chapman just before Christmas. The Reds stayed in touch the whole time and negotiations really started heating up over the last 4 to 5 days.
“You have to make bold moves from time to time,” Jocketty said.
The Red Sox were involved early on in the process having made a $15.5 million offer to Chapman. But according to Alex Speier of WEEI.com, the Red Sox pulled the offer when Chapman switched agents.
On the baseball side of things, it’s good to see a small market team get involved and take a chance. Now if more of those small market teams took a risk like this, we might not see as much parity in baseball like we do now.
