Cubs' Joe Maddon defends usage of Chapman in playoffs
Cubs manager Joe Maddon responded to comments by former closer Aroldis Chapman regarding his decisions to use the reliever during the team’s World Series run.
Chapman, who signed a five-year, $86 million deal to rejoin his former team, the New York Yankees, said he disagreed with the way he was used, referring to his extended, multi-inning outing with the Cubs up by a significant margin in Game 6 of the World Series. He said he was “tired” when he took the mound in Game 7 and allowed a game-tying home run. Maddon was criticized at the time for his decision-making.
Maddon expressed no regrets. The Cubs, of course, went on to win the series anyway.
“Would I do it differently? No. There is no Game 7 without winning Game 6. And there is no Game 8 if you don’t win Game 7. That’s why you do what you have to do,” Maddon told the New York Post. “I appreciate what he said. If he feels that way, he did not tell me about that at the moment or after the moment. At the end of the day, man, we would not have won without him, and I appreciate everything he did. But I promise everything we did do, we did with his consent by talking to him prior to the game.”
“Personally, I don't agree with the way he used me, but he is the manager and he has the strategy,” Chapman told reporters this week. “My job is to be ready, to be ready to pitch, however that is, however many innings that is, I need to be ready for that. I need to go in and do my job.”
“Every game I put him in, I talked to him and his interpreter to make sure that he was OK because this season he did not like pitching multiple innings so we stopped doing it,” Maddon added. “So I talked to him about if we did that in the playoffs, how would he feel about that and he said he was fine with that.”
