Aroldis Chapman has 400 career saves. The 400th came on 6 September 2026 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a scoreless ninth — one hit, no walks, two strikeouts — to finish a 3–1 Boston Red Sox win over the Baltimore Orioles and complete a three-game sweep. The Holguín left-hander is the ninth pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball to reach the number, and the first born in Cuba.
He is 38 years old, in his seventeenth major league season, and he did it in the middle of the best year he has had in a decade.
The ninth member of the only club above him
Reaching 400 did not simply cross a round number for Chapman. Every pitcher who had already reached it sits above him on the all-time saves list, so the milestone moved him into the only group that outranks him:
| # | Pitcher | Career saves | Throws |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mariano Rivera | 652 | R |
| 2 | Trevor Hoffman | 601 | R |
| 3 | Kenley Jansen | 494 | R |
| 4 | Lee Smith | 478 | R |
| 5 | Craig Kimbrel | 441 | R |
| 6 | Francisco Rodríguez | 437 | R |
| 7 | John Franco | 424 | L |
| 8 | Billy Wagner | 422 | L |
| 9 | Aroldis Chapman | 400 | L |
Career totals from the Baseball-Reference career saves leaderboard, read 8 September 2026. Jansen, Kimbrel and Chapman are active and their totals move.
Two things in that table are worth pausing on. Chapman is only the third left-hander ever to save 400 games, after Franco and Wagner. And the club has nine members now — not four, and not five. That number has been reported wrongly more than once this summer, including in a widely syndicated piece in late August that put the membership at four.
What the career looks like up close
| G | SV/SVO | ERA | IP | SO | W–L | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026, Boston Red Sox | 50 | 33/35 | 2.03 | 48.2 | 65 | 3–4 |
| Career, 2010–2026 | 913 | 400/452 | 2.49 | 870.0 | 1,396 | 63–52 |
MLB Stats API, career and 2026 season totals for player 547973, read 8 September 2026.
Thirty-three saves in 35 chances at 38 years old is not a veteran being walked to a milestone. It is the tenth season of his career with 30 or more saves — 2012 through 2016, then 2018, 2019, 2021, 2025 and 2026 — and the second of those has come with Boston, who signed him for 2025 when the market had largely decided he was finished.
He also holds a record that may outlast the saves. On 4 July 2026 he passed Hoyt Wilhelm for the most strikeouts by a relief pitcher in major league history, and he is now at 1,396 career strikeouts. Saves depend on what a manager does with the ninth inning. Strikeouts do not.
Why no Cuban had reached 400 before
Here is the part the American coverage of the 400th save left out. Chapman’s record is a Cuban record built entirely outside Cuba, in a job Cuban baseball never really created.
The modern closer — one inning, ninth only, four or five appearances a week — is an American bullpen invention of the 1980s and 1990s, and the Serie Nacional did not adopt it. Cuban staffs ran their starters deep and used their best relief arms in the innings that needed them rather than the innings the scoreboard reserved. A pitcher could be the finest reliever of his generation on the island and finish with a save total that would not register in the major leagues. There was no route to 400 saves in Cuba because there was no such thing as a 400-save career there to have.
So the number does not measure what Cuba produced. It measures what a Cuban arm did once it was handed a role Cuba had no use for. The next-closest Cuban-born pitcher on the all-time list is Raisel Iglesias, at 284 — a product of the same export era — and nobody who spent a career in the Serie Nacional’s own bullpens is close.
The other Cuban closer is one save away
Chapman is not the only one. In Japan, Raidel Martínez is one save from 250 in Nippon Professional Baseball — he stood at 249 on the NPB official register dated 7 September 2026, pitching for the Yomiuri Giants — and at 250 he becomes the first foreign-born pitcher to reach the Meikyūkai threshold in the league’s history. Two Cuban relievers, on two continents, both at a number nobody of their nationality has ever reached, inside the same fortnight.
It caps a season that was already the most Cuban in major league history: thirty Cuban-born players have appeared in a game in 2026, seven of them were named All-Stars, and Chapman was one of the seven.
What is left of 2026
Boston is 80–65, third in the American League East and holding the second AL wild card by seven games, which means Chapman should get more save chances before the regular season ends. Billy Wagner’s 422 is the next mark above him on the all-time list; at the rate of the last month that is a 2027 conversation, not a September one.
We wrote the approach to this milestone on 3 September, with the arithmetic and the club membership set out in full: Aroldis Chapman is closing in on 400 — a number no Cuban pitcher has ever reached.
More on Cuban baseball: the Cuban baseball hub.
Spotted an error in this article? Let us know and we'll correct it.
