NEW YORK — Six weeks before Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman declined to show up at Yankee Stadium for a mandatory pre-postseason team workout, Yankees pitchers were playing catch on the field in Oakland. The team had reconvened after an off day and trainers noted that Chapman was walking with a limp. As the longtime fireballing closer lifted the leg of his pants, nobody on the field that day could have expected the source of his discomfort.
A new tattoo, unfortunately portraying his sister’s face, was surrounded by a veritable moat of pus about an inch wide, according to multiple people who saw it. The tattoo and the ensuing wound were news to the Yankees. The issue had gone unchecked for so long that Chapman was in clear physical pain, with a spiking fever as his body tried to fight off a sizable infection.
Chapman’s timing couldn’t have been worse. It was the start of a 10-game road trip on which the Yankees had hoped to use to get him back into form for the final sprint of the season. Leading up to that day in Oakland, he’d already missed six weeks on the injured list with Achilles tendonitis and had pitched to a 4.70 ERA. The plan to use him on the road was intentional: He had a 19.3 percent walk rate at home to that point in the season and a 13.3 percent walk rate on the road. (Those numbers would get more disparate by the end of the season, ballooning to a 22.7 percent walk rate at home for the year and a 12.9 percent walk rate on the road.)
At that point, he had already lost his job as the designated closer, but the Yankees knew they were a better team with Chapman at his best than they would be with someone else in his place.
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