Chapman is not exactly a largely-known quantity. What is known is that Chapman has hit triple-digits in the past with his fastball and at time has showed a nasty slider. He's had some command issues in competition in the past and that has to be worked on, but that's not unlike many pitchers his age.

So what should they do with this kid?

I'll tell you what they should do, they should stick him out on the mound 60'-6" from the NL's best and let him pitch!

Look at this roster of young pitchers the Reds are assembling:

Aroldis Chapman - (02/28/88)
Homer Bailey - (05/03/86)
Johnny Cueto - (02/15/86)
Matt Maloney - (01/16/84)
Edinson Volquez - (07/03/83)

To go along with young pitchers they have some young offense too:

Jay Bruce - (04/03/87)
Joey Votto - (09/10/83)
Brandon Phillips - (06/28/81)

Let's face it, Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang are going to be gone by the trading deadline and they are only going to be getting younger because they aren't going to be able to compete with the St. Louis Cardinals this year anyway. There are too many other quality teams to get a wild card spot, so they might as well let all these young players gel and grow together.

Is he too wild at this point and will that get him in trouble?

Hell yes, half the time he's got no idea where the ball is going when it leaves his hands, but it's the other half that the Reds will get excited about. Like all young pitchers he is going to have to learn how to pitch. He'll take his lumps, but there is no reason to baby him.

Chapman will be 22 years old on Monday and has already been through things that many of us will never encounter in our life time. After what he's been through, facing batters like Albert Pujols will be a piece of cake. In fact, standing on a pitcher's mound doing what he loves to do and knows best is probably where he feels most at home.

Chapman is young but it's not like he's never faced veteran professional competition under pressure. He's got experience as being the ace of the Cuban national team's rotation and has played in plenty of international competition including the WBC. If you know anything about Cuba and their national team, there isn't a group of athletes in the world sands the Russian hockey team that has as much pressure on it, pressure from its own government to perform in international competition.

Dusty Baker - not a young pitchers best friend

I'm not one of those who think that hard pitch counts are necessary. I'm one of those who believe that the Yankees did in fact turn Joba Chamberlain into the Cowardly Lion. This kid throws hard and can throw hard for many innings (see chart below).  Let him throw, he's a pitcher, that's what you are paying him for!

If a young pitcher is throwing well and you planned to throw him approximately 95-100 pitches and he's got two outs in the 7th inning of a one run game, don't pull him, let him work his way out of it. How the heck are these kids ever going to learn to pitch if they don't go through these things? If the kid ends up with 108 pitches, instead of 95-100, so what? These kids are young and strong; let them learn to go 7, 8 or God forbid 9 innings.

That said, Reds Manager Dusty Baker has long been known to have a total disregard to pitch counts. While it's one thing to let a kid finish an inning or try to work out of a jam, it's complete different thing to just pitch the kid with no regard for the situation or circumstances until his arm falls off.

Dusty Baker has had a pitcher finish in the top-eleven in pitches thrown each of the past nine years, and he has left the starter out there for 122 or more pitches more than any other manager this past decade.

As the former manager of the Cubs, Baker came under a lot of criticism because he inherited a young staff full of talented arms with the Cubs-and ruined them! Kerry Wood? Got sent to the bullpen and has never been the same. Mark Prior? Hasn't had a full season since 2003. Only Carlos Zambrano is still standing, and even he has shown signs of age-and he is only 28! Dr. Roto recently opined that Zambrano is a 28 year old with the pitching arm of a 35 year old.

Let Mario Soto and Brian Price teach this kid the nuances of the game and have him perfect a third pitch and let them say when he comes out. Let him let him learn on the job and take the good with the bad, just don't abuse him. In the years to follow they will be happy they did.

This has been done before

There are many examples of throwing a young kid with a great arm right who is not ready for prime time in the fire, the most recent successful one I can think of is Jeremy Bonderman.

In 2003 the Detroit Tigers took a 20 year old Jeremy Bonderman and ran him out on the mound every day. They had no hope of being a playoff team so why not, he was one of the better arms in the organization. Bonderman got shelled going 6-19 with a 5.56 ERA. The Tigers didn't abuse him though as he only threw 162 innings. In 2004 throwing 184 innings he lowered his ERA to 4.89 and won 11 games. In 2005 he threw 189 innings, lowered his ERA to 4.57 and won 14 games. In 2006 he was one of the fixtures of the Tigers rotation winning 14 games with a 4.08 ERA in 214 innings with 202 K's.

Most importantly in 2006, just four years into his young MLB career Bonderman found himself throwing a dominating 5 hit, 1 BB, 8.1 innings in the Tigers playoff clinching ALDS game 4 against the mighty New York Yankees. Bonderman went on to have a very successful post season with 3.10 ERA in his three starts in the ALDS, ALCS and WS. He took his lumps and then was ready to perform on the big stage when he got there.

Chapman is two years older than Bondeman was. With all his intense international pitching experience he has a lot more pitching experience then Bonderman ever had, and he has more LIFE experience than people twice and even thrice his age.

The Cincinnati Reds aren't very different from the 2003 Detroit Tigers. They aren't going to win this year and next year might be a stretch too, but if you can get all these young players to gel and play together, grow together, win together as a group of youngsters, when they are veterans in 2012, they could have something special.

Aroldis Chapman should start the year with the Red in their rotation, that's it and that's all.

Just because he will walk too many guys to be an attractive option for your fantasy team is NOT a valid reason for paying him the start of his $30.25 million contract to get minor league hitters out. - Mike Cardano, Around the Horn Baseball

But that risk alone is not even the primary reason to allow Chapman to stay in the minors to get completely acclimated to pitching in the US. Unlike Stephen Strasburg, Chapman's path to the majors has been paved primarily with talent and not with accomplishment. Washington's prized pick's past performance gives us an indicator of his relative readiness, but Chapman remains mostly an international man of mystery. He has limited exposure to the talents who populate the Major Leagues, having faced Australia and Japan in the most recent World Baseball Classic. He was effective against Australia allowing a single run in four very solid innings. But against Japan, a team populated with many more major league caliber players, he struggled, loading the bases in the third inning with just one out, before being yanked. Those bequeathed runners came around to score, accounting for the three runs he allowed.

Scouts remained wowed by his electric fastball, his smooth delivery and his upside. Oh yes, we all love that upside. Lefties with triple digit fastballs are rare and highly valuable commodities in baseball. But how well results in Cuba's Serie Nacional translate into success in the Major Leagues is anyone's guess. Even more frightening, despite some stunningly good numbers, his lines are more equivocal than they seem.

Before trivializing his accomplishments, let's list them for the record.

At first glance, despite being wowed by the strikeouts, I shudder at his 9.0 BB/9 IP in his rookie year. His control steadily improved, but a career 1.8 K/BB ratio in a statistically significant number of innings over four years is not a record that inspires thoughts of world beater dominance. Those walks befuddle his entire Cuban career and leave him open to comparison to past live arms (Brien Taylor, though injury claimed him as much as inability) who never were able to harness their talent to translate it to a long term major league career.

What's even more damning is that, unlike Strasburg, who at least had some experience this autumn in the Arizona Fall League, Chapman hasn't pitched competitively since defecting last July. Spring Training will give us a statistically insignificant taste of his talent, against competition that's working out the kinks, readying themselves for the season and not playing full tilt. Cincinnati needs to recognize that unlike Washington, they are not getting a polished player, they have a raw talent, needing a minimum of two seasons in the minors to resolve his control issues and acclimate to MLB style ball. It wouldn't hurt if in that time the Reds also decide to install a manager who doesn't have the reputation of wearing out talented pitchers.

The signing was quite the coup for Walt Jocketty, and with luck and health, in 2012, Cincinnati could trot out a rotation of Edinson Volquez, Johnny Cueto, Homer Bailey, Aroldis Chapman and Matt Maloney. A young quintet of talented pitchers would give them an edge on their division at the precise moment that the Cardinals slip to regroup and before Houston returns to strength. As tempting as it will be to get Chapman up and getting outs, he is not legitimately close to a big league career at this point. A season split between low and high A ball, followed by a season split between AA and AAA is the minimum to properly season him. While I still believe there's no such thing as a pitching prospect, Chapman is not ready to record outs on the big league level. Until he is, he shouldn't be there. - Joe Tetreault, TetreaultVision

For more of Joe's take on the topic visit his fine site.