Red Reposter - Aroldis Chapman and Winning the Future

Pitching coach Bryan Price spoke at length yesterday about Aroldis Chapman
Count me among those concerned about his future. I think the bullpen is as good a place as any for him to spend this season, but after the comments earlier this winter from Bill Bavasi and Dusty Baker, I was worried Chapman would be too good in the bullpen and make it difficult for the Reds to want to move him to the rotation in the future. Price has said a great deal the past few days to quash those concerns of mine:

"With the role that he’s currently holding, he’s not going to use his change-up a great deal," Price said. "However, we’re going to stay familiar with it and continue to use in the spring and when he’s warming up because in the future we see him in the rotation. Things have to unfold. A lot of it is need. Because he’s so young, there isn’t a strong impulse that we have to act now. Right now, I think No. 1 this fills a huge need and void since we don’t have Arthur (Rhodes) back. No. 2, it minimizes innings early in his career, which I don’t think is a bad thing. No. 3, it’s putting him in an environment where he’s getting his taste of the big leagues in a situation where he’s going to have lot of other support down there. If we need to give him a day off, we’ve still got Billy Bray, Dontrelle Willis potentially or Matt Maloney. Plus, we have strong right-handers who get left-handers out. We’re not going to have to overtax him."

Chapman says he's comfortable with his role in the bullpen
For now, anyway. "I didn’t think about it too much: My job is a reliever. I’m a reliever now," he said. "I want to be a starter but I don’t think about that. My job now is to be a reliever. That’s job I’m going to do. The day they want me to be a starter, I’ll start thinking about it."

Edinson Volquez says the 4-year offer the Reds made this winter was for less than what Johnny Cueto got
which makes sense, because Cueto has been healthy the past two years. If I had to guess, I would think the offer was likely around 4 years and $15-16 mil. That's certainly nothing to sneeze at, and Volquez says he thought it over very carefully. "I talked to my family about it," he said. "I talked to my mom. She said, 'Do what you want to do, it's your career. If you feel good with that, go forward.'" Volquez ultimately decided to turn down the offer and take his chances this season. "If I pitch good this year, I think I can get more than that for four years." I think chances are pretty good that, as long as he stays healthy, he can out-perform that offer. Still, it's hard to pass up that kind of cash, especially when you are still somewhat unproven coming off a major injury.