Confident he ‘can help carry a team,’ Matt Chapman aims for bigger Blue Jays role

Baseball

Published 28.02.2023

Confident he ‘can help carry a team,’ Matt Chapman aims for bigger Blue Jays role

DUNEDIN, Fla. — A couple of numbers caught out to Matt Chapman as he took inventory of his 2022 season and so they didn’t embody his 27 residence runs, 76 RBIs and 4.1 fWAR.

Far extra noteworthy to the Toronto Blue Jays third baseman was that he pulled the ball at a 47.7 per cent clip whereas hanging out 170 instances, every the second highest totals of his profession, components in his .229 batting common.

The empty at-bats bothered him — “If I can play to what I’m capable of doing, like I’ve done in years past, I can help carry a team and help the team win,” he says — so he determined to make just a few changes. Gone is his leg kick, changed by a toe faucet that higher leverages the bottom to regulate the ahead shift when he swings, with the tip aim turning into a extra full hitter.

“I wasn’t making enough contact, I wasn’t driving the ball to right field and wasn’t behind the baseball as much,” Chapman says. “I used to be sort of out and round and pulling the ball quite a bit. I needed to get again to having the ability to use the entire area and be much more athletic within the field.

“I know I’m better than that.”

That the 29-year-old’s harsh self-critique extends to his spectacular play within the area – “I also didn’t win a Gold Glove so I needed to work on my defence, too,” he notes – is demonstrative of why the pending free agent has turn out to be such a dominant pressure within the Blue Jays clubhouse.

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Rather than disregarding the slight as a bizarre by-product of a flawed choice standards that rewarded Ramon Urias of the Baltimore Orioles for 769.1 innings on the new nook over his personal 1,344.1, Chapman took the consequence personally.

That supervisor John Schneider says “I 100 per cent disagree with him not winning it,” and provides that after deep diving into the information, “you’re like, meh, this doesn’t make sense, move on, he’ll win it this year,” is of little consolation to Chapman.

“It was humbling to not win,” he says. “I would like to return again and never take the little issues with no consideration and get higher. …

“I definitely looked into it … and I got docked on some plays I didn’t necessarily think I should have gotten docked on,” Chapman continues. “But if you look at the metrics, Urias saved more runs than me. I made less errors (five versus eight) and he only played 98 games, which was one of the things I thought stood out. I played 153, so that part of it I didn’t think was necessarily fair. But he saved more runs than I did in a lesser amount of time and Runs Prevented (5-1 for Urias) and Outs Above Average (7-1 for Urias) are huge. He had better numbers than I did.”

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All of the numbers for Chapman will matter in additional methods than one this 12 months with free company looming within the fall. Manny Machado’s $350-million, 11-year extension settlement with the San Diego Padres units him as much as not solely be the most effective third baseman in the marketplace by a large margin, however the most effective offensive gamers obtainable, too.

Chapman, the player-union rep for the Oakland Athletics throughout the lockout and for the Blue Jays final 12 months, was heartened by the variety of huge contracts handed out throughout the low season, saying “it shows that these teams have money and aren’t afraid to go over the (competitive balance tax) threshold.”

Given the worrying market tendencies main into the lockout and compounded by the results of the COVID pandemic, “it’s definitely nice to know that there are teams willing to spend money and that free agents are going to get paid as long as you take care of your business.”

Chapman is intent on doing that and price noting is that previous to the 2020 season, he turned down a $150-million, 10-year contract extension from the Athletics, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported final spring.

Making it to free company “is an accomplishment in itself,” he says and provides that “I’m proud that I didn’t sign that deal before in Oakland. And I’m proud that I’ve made it to this point in my career and that everything’s going to be OK.”

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Still, Chapman stresses that he doesn’t “want this conversation to come off like that’s my focus because that’s not my focus. My focus is on winning baseball games for this team. I love being a Blue Jay and I love being here. That’s where my focus is.”

Whether there’s a future for him with the Blue Jays past this season will play out over time, however there needs to be little doubt about how invested he’s.

Now in his second season with the membership after arriving in a post-lockout commerce final spring, Chapman feels extra snug in his surrounding having earned the respect of his teammates. Especially early on in 2022, “I didn’t feel like I had the right to speak up about certain things … I didn’t want to come off as some new guy that wants to just come in and bark orders or anything like that.”

The familiarity he enjoys this spring frees him to be himself, to the place “I can just talk to guys more, help lead guys more, help my teammates out in any way that they need, be there for them, pick guys up and move this team forward in any way I can.”

Part of that’s the collective emphasis on the finer factors of the sport and the maturity that’s been a speaking level all through camp thus far. He defines that progress as “just being professional, knowing what is expected of you when you want to be on a winning baseball team.”

“Being able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you’re doing everything you can to help this team on a daily basis,” Chapman continues. “Being able to communicate with your teammates, make each other better, holding each other accountable, little things like that. Last year we relied on talent a lot and let a few of those slip through the cracks. Sometimes those things catch up with you in the end. For us this year, it’s tightening up those little things that will eventually lead us to being able to capitalize in the moments we’re supposed to.”

There will likely be lots using on the power to do exactly that for each Chapman and the Blue Jays.