Aroldis Chapman Re-Ups With the Red Sox

The Red Sox got to work on their 2026 bullpen over the holiday weekend, signing closer Aroldis Chapman to a contract extension that keeps him in Boston for at least one more season. Chapman’s one-year, $13.3 million deal comes in the form of a $12 million salary for next season, a $1 million signing bonus, and a $300,000 buyout if a $13 million mutual option for 2027 is not exercised. That option becomes guaranteed if he pitches 40 innings in 2026 and passes a physical exam after the season.

After appearing to be in decline for at least a few years and falling out of the conversation of baseball’s top closers — and at times losing the closer’s role altogether — Chapman is dominating in his first season with the Red Sox. Entering play Tuesday, he has a 1.00 ERA and a 1.78 FIP over 54 innings with 77 strikeouts and 14 walks. No, you didn’t misread that last part: Chapman has issued only 14 free passes this season across 54 innings, which works out to a rate of 7.1% and 2.33 BB/9 — by far the lowest marks of his career. Even at his absolute best, Chapman would walk three or four batters per nine innings, a reasonable trade-off for the rest of his skillset. However, as he aged, that control degraded, and from 2021 through 2024, he walked 15% of the batters he faced. So, for him to suddenly put up the best control season of his career, at age 37, is an impressive feat.

ESPN’s Buster Olney talked a bit about how Chapman’s approach changed in the spring, but the basic explanation for what we’re seeing is he has stopped throwing his fastball down the middle. Instead, on the advice of Boston catcher Connor Wong and with the assistance of PitchCom, Chapman is now actually trying to spot his heater. While this is the type of anecdote that sometimes sounds like folklore, the data do suggest that Chapman is suddenly locating his fastball with dramatically more competence than in the past. According to Stuff+, Chapman’s Location+ of 179 for his fastball is the fifth-best number ever tallied (min. 40 innings), compared to the 94 he ran over his past four seasons. His sinker, once a sideshow in his repertoire, has become its focal point in the way the slider once was. This isn’t a sinker thrown to induce a groundball but to be an out pitch, a 100-mph sinker high and outside against righties, high and hard on the hands of lefties. Only one player in Statcast history has ever finished with a better whiff rate on his sinker than Chapman’s 38.9% this season: Josh Hader in 2019 (40.7%) and 2021 (40.5%).

Chapman has also simplified his approach. In recent years, he had been mucking around with the slider in early counts more than in the past, but this year, he’s throwing first-pitch fastballs or sinkers about 85% of the time. That has resulted in a 71.1% first-pitch strike percentage this season, nearly 10 percentage points above his previous high of 61.9% in 2017.

By all reports, Chapman has enjoyed playing with the Red Sox, and this appears to ring true in that despite his elite season, he’s only getting a minor bump in yearly salary for this extension, and only a one-year guarantee at signing. Even at his age, I suspect he would have done better in free agency. If this were three or four decades ago, Chapman would be a serious Cy Young contender, but as relief outings have gotten shorter, it’s become more difficult for closers to win the award. Last year, Emmanuel Clase became the first reliever to finish top three in the Cy Young voting since Francisco Rodríguez in 2008. Eric Gagne is the most recent reliever to win a Cy Young, all the way back in 2003. This is one of the reasons why the BBWAA recently voted to create a new Reliever of the Year award, starting next season.

ZiPS sees no particular reason to worry about Chapman. Even with the walk rate not projected to stay this low and the impossibility of any pitcher maintaining a .175 BABIP in the majors, Chapman still projects as an excellent closer in 2026, far better than he was from 2021-2024. There is some downside risk here, with Chapman approaching 40 and relievers being volatile — ZiPS gives him a 23% chance of posting an ERA of 4.50 or worse — but the Red Sox accounted for that possibility in this deal. ZiPS also projects Chapman to have a 70% chance at becoming the ninth player in major league history to notch 400 saves.

There’s been a lot of player movement in and out of Boston in recent years, but the 2026 squad already looks quite a lot like the current roster, and with Chapman now signed, Justin Wilson and Rob Refsnyder are the only two players who started the season with the Red Sox that are slated to hit free agency this winter. Their bullpen this season ranks third in baseball in ERA, fifth in FIP, and second in WAR. With this signing, the Red Sox have now secured the return of the pitcher most responsible for making that happen.