Chapman is the outlier.
ヤンキースが人類最速左腕アロルディス・チャップマンを獲得しました。
You already know that new Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman throws baseballs very, very hard. But what’s amazing is how much harder he can throw than the rest of Major League pitchers, nearly every one of whom is, to some extent, a physical freak capable of firing a ball faster than at least 99.9% of humanity.
MLB.com’s Statcast leaderboard for fastest pitches needs a “Chapman Filter” because otherwise Chapman is literally the only guy on there. According to a pitchF/X search on BaseballSavant.com, Chapman threw 77 pitches harder than the fastest pitch by any other hurler — a 101.6 fastball from new teammate Nathan Eovaldi in mid-August.
You might guess some other fireballer had thrown a single outlying pitch that landed somewhere among the top 77 fastest pitches thrown in baseball in 2015, but you guessed wrong. Chapman is the outlier. If there is anyone else living on Planet Earth with the capacity to throw a baseball as hard as he does with any semblance of accuracy, Major League scouts haven’t found him yet.
The only guy with a case, incidentally, is Eovaldi. The Yanks’ 25-year-old righty not only threw the league’s fastest non-Chapman pitch in 2015, but also throws far, far more 100-plus mph fastballs than any other starting pitcher.
Since starters tend to throw a tick harder when working in short stints out of the bullpen, there’s some chance Eovaldi could reach the Chapman echelon in relief work. And though the Yanks appear pretty set on dominant late-inning relievers, this site says they should move Eovaldi to the bullpen for giggles so they can have two guys in the same relief corps capable of throwing 103 mph.
Chapman threw 336 pitches of 100 mph or faster in 2015. The rest of the league combined to throw 225.
“outlier”をとりあげます。
英辞郎 on the WEBをみてみると、outlier 「 異常値、外れ値」とありました。統計の世界で使われる表現のようで、Oxford Learners Dictionaryでは“A data point on a graph or in a set of results that is very much bigger or smaller than the next nearest data point.” と定義されていました。
チャップマン投手で連想できる推定値から異常にかけ離れている数値といえば「球速」です（"a physical freak capable of firing a ball faster than at least 99.9% of humanity"）。最速171キロ、平均球速が160キロを超えるチャップマン投手だからこそ用いられた表現かもしれません。今回の記事では「規格外」と解釈できるでしょうか。
同投手は恋人に対するDVが問題視されており、MLB機構から何らかの処分が下される可能性があるようですが、ヤンキースの投手陣はさらに強固なものとなることは間違いありません。（Chris）
