Elite defence is what drove Jays' trade for Chapman

Scott Mitchell

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DUNEDIN, Fla. — When everyone went to bed Tuesday night, the Toronto Blue Jays still had a gaping hole at third base.

That was no longer the case shortly after the sun came up Wednesday morning.

In trading for Matt Chapman, sending four prospects to the Oakland Athletics in exchange for the 28-year-old, the Jays added an elite defender that checks off perhaps the most important need box the club had.

With the lineup still potent and the rotation arguably one of the best in baseball, subpar defence was quietly one of the ways you could envision a pretty stacked ballclub losing important games this summer.

Both in 2020 and last season, especially in May and June, the Jays booted away close games with defensive blunders.

That’s not likely to happen at the hot corner now.

Chapman’s 17 Outs Above Average led all third basemen last year, and the 2014 first-round pick isn’t just a good defender, he’s a great one.

“We’re always talking about pitching and defence — our defence just got a lot better,” manager Charlie Montoyo said shortly after the deal was made official. “He’s one of the best third basemen I’ve ever seen in the big leagues and really happy to have him.”

With 78 Defensive Runs Saved over the course of his career, all the metrics align and the eye test is sure to provide a whole lot of dazzling Chapman highlights on TSN SportsCentre this summer.

Positioned deeper than just about any third baseman in baseball thanks to his cannon for an arm, Chapman’s presence will allow the Jays to shade Bo Bichette up the middle more and maximize their young shortstop’s strengths defensively.

“His range is so good and throwing from just about any place on the diamond, it really does change the way you can position players and I’m sure it’s a very good feeling for Hyun Jin Ryu to look to his right and see essentially a wall standing there,” GM Ross Atkins said Wednesday afternoon when he emerged from his office at the club’s player development complex a few hours after the deal.

What the Jays are getting with Chapman’s bat is a different story.

Worth a career-best 6.1 fWAR in 2019 thanks to a .249/.342/.506 slash line, 36 homers, and that aforementioned elite defence, Chapman has struggled with the bat since.

Over the shortened 2020 season and last year combined, the California native put up a .215/.306/.431 slash with 37 homers, undergoing hip surgery in the middle of that in September 2020.

There are many who feel Chapman’s bat is ready to rebound another year removed from the procedure to repair a torn hip labrum as well as clean up other damage.

Despite that injury, Chapman has only been on the IL three times in his career, also missing a handful of games with a thumb bruise and a knee injury.

“He’s so well-rounded and such a good player with such a good track record,” Atkins said. “He’s extremely durable. He’s just played constantly and he’s always making an impact. Last year, we saw him a good bit and I didn’t want to see him hitting.”

Even though Chapman only hit .210 and struck out 32.5 per cent of the time in 2021, he was still worth 3.4 fWAR thanks to that glove.

“I still feel like he’s a very viable offensive threat,” Atkins said. “A big-time threat on both sides of the ball, and that’s hard to find.”

It’s easy to envision 30-plus homers and a whole lot of runs driven in, as Chapman will likely slide into the five or six hole in the lineup and see a whole lot of ducks on the pond.

His ability to work a walk could mesh well around free swingers like Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Teoscar Hernandez.

“It really is a good complement,” Atkins said. “The plate discipline, the power, I think he’s going to thrive in our lineup.”

Solidifying the hot corner allows the Jays to mix-and-match at second base with left-handed hitting Cavan Biggio and righty Santiago Espinal, but both will appear at multiple spots, with Espinal also serving as the backup shortstop on the rare occasion Bichette needs a day off.

In exchange for two years of Chapman, who’s controlled through the 2023 season and estimated to make $9.5 million in arbitration for 2022, the Jays had to pay up in the form of 2021 first-round pick Gunnar Hoglund, infielder Kevin Smith, left-handed starter Zach Logue and lefty reliever Kirby Snead.

It’s a reasonable price for a team pushing to win a World Series, but Hoglund is a terrific prospect with not only pretty high floor but a big ceiling as well.

Once he recovers from Tommy John surgery this summer, the Ole Miss right-hander’s stock is likely to be on the rise over the next couple of years as a potential fast-mover for Oakland’s rotation.

In total, the deal removes prospects No. 5 (Hoglund), No. 9 (Smith) and No. 22 (Logue) from the Jays’ system.

Moving forward, there’s still enough in the system for Atkins to engineer another blockbuster, potentially in July at the trade deadline, if something presents itself.

From here until opening day, the Jays are likely to tinker still, but Atkins isn’t closing any doors.

“In terms of aggressiveness, maybe you can tell by my eyes that it’s around the clock and we’re spending a lot of time and energy on ways to make our team better,” he said. “If that means in incremental ways or significant ways, we want to make sure that we can present those opportunities to ownership and to our group. Having said all that, we feel very good about where we are. We feel like we’ve put ourselves in a good position. We have a really good foundation and still feel good about our farm system, as well. If there’s ways to incrementally improve, we’ll look to do that and we’re still open to, whether it be today or two months from now, make more than an incremental change.”