Matt Chapman is no longer a Blue Jay

you're listening to Blue Jays Nation radio with Cam Lewis and Tyler yemchuk a member of the nation network of podcasts episode 197 of blue jays Nation radio is brought to you by Bano the game starts now at ban.com League Baseball maybe you got an inkling on a spring training game maybe you're looking to get the latest NHL NBA odds they have it all over at patano the 2023 EGR brand of the year for best Sportsbook operator 19 plus please play responsibly you're mju and kumy with you once again for episode 197 a little spring training update kumy how are you doing uh I mean it's early March it's minus 25 outside I've sneezed over a hundred times this morning I don't know what's going on this is uh this is ideal man this is spring here we are yeah this is spring I'm doing this podcast to procrastinate having to go outside and shovel right now which which is not something I enjoy saying on a baseball podcast but it is bright and sunny down in Florida the Jays are in action right now as we're recording this against the Boston Red Sox but there's a handful of headlines floating around so we figured we'd hop on and do a little 152 minute Weekend Update podcast in kumy the big news over the last 48 hours is the news that Matt Chapman has signed with the San Francisco Giants a three-year deal that's like kind of not really a three-year deal it's worth a total of 54 million but he's got two opt outs in it so he can opt out if he goes and has a bang in year he can just be like I'm done I'm going back to free agency uh but that price tag I think when you see the headline come across three years and only 54 million I think rightfully a lot of Jay's fans myself included are sitting there going why is Ross Atkins not paying more than that for this guy yeah I mean it's a little surprising it's not it's not surprising that Matt Chapman wound up signing this contract I think last week or two weeks ago whenever it was that Cody Bellinger re signed that deal with the Chicago Cubs it was something similar three years 80 Mills an opt out after each year gives him the ability to try free agency if he has another good season without the draft pick compensation attached which again obviously makes it easier for you in free agency it's um yeah it's not surprising this exact contract was signed after we saw the Bellinger one but it's surprising that it wasn't with the Jays it seemed like when Bellinger signed that deal it was like all right he the Cubs had the advantage because if you're another team why would you potentially sacrifice a draft pick and international slot money for a guy who could be there and then opt out and then walk the following year or you know opt out and demand more money to come back whatever the situation is but despite the Blue Jays being in that same situation where they have the draft pick Advantage Chapman's still wound up signing with a different team he joins the San Francisco Giants they have to give up a draft pick and they have to give up money and he could leave them right after so it's it's it's surprising it's surprising that it wasn't the Jays who wound up making this deal but I guess here we are now we don't have to sit here in spring training and wonder all right is there you know a big name player who's going to come and improve the roster is there a savior no there's not it's just whoever's on the roster and they're gonna have to figure it out yeah it is disappointing I I do Wonder a little bit like not that I really want to give Ross Atkins and mark shapy the benefit out of the dot after what little activity we saw over the winter and we do know they made a rich offer for Chapman or a more Rich offer for Chapman at some point last season or at the beginning of the winter he turned it down thinking he could get more but Matt Chapman's a guy born in California born in V Victorville Victorville whatever it is he played his high school in California he played his college in California I wonder if maybe he wasn't just like you know what if I'm gonna take the shortterm lower money deal somewhere I'm gonna play back at home I'm gonna go back to the Bay Area obviously played started his career in Oakland I wonder if maybe that was a factor working against the Jason here oh there you go it is a possibility sorry I my M my mic muted uh we never really know ultimately what a player's priority is and though it might seem from a distance oh yeah match happens a well-liked player on the blue jay it seemed like he had a good time here seemed like it was a perfect fit seemed like it made a whole bunch of sense you never really know I mean like you said this is a guy who grew up he went to high school in California he went to college there drafted by the Oakland A spent the first part of his career of course being traded to Canada playing in Toronto is a a pretty significant difference than what you know so I mean maybe if he was going to sign a deal deal with the Jays it would have come in at more than that you know three years 54 million the 2018 and 16 that he got from San Francisco maybe it would have cost more but I don't know it's it's it's it's hard to say because it seemed the Jays did have interest in Matt Chapman because during the season there's a report they offered a five or sixy year deal one that was over1 million and he turned it down so if there was that level of Interest previously what's the change and I mean I don't know it's it it seems like there was interest from both sides but for whatever reason it just it didn't work out so now we're sitting here and like you said there's no savior coming there's no big splash coming that's going to make this front office's winter off season look any different than it currently is so who does this put the most pressure on to actually perform next year I I mean obviously there's pressure facing Ross Atkins these kind of little bets he took all over the place need to work out I think Justin Turner's got to find a way to be this year's Brandon Belt to some extent maybe not as impactful but somewhere in that range and then what you're looking at Isaiah ker FFA finding a way to outproduce the contract they gave him which is probably a rich contract to begin with like my point is it's hard to be optimistic looking at these guys and saying boy I I believe ikf can have a big year like I just that sounds weird yeah it's it's it's not really easy to come into this and think oh yeah they've they've got I mean I don't know since they signed Isaiah Conor phpp I've kind of tried to look at it like oh this guy was brought in to replace Whit Maryfield Justin Turner was brought in to replace Brandon Belt I'm trying to not view it as you know ikf is supposed to be the new Chapman but now that Chapman is gone and there isn't another addition it's straight up just okay a guy who put up 7.7 wins above replacement over the past two seasons which is second on the team over those two years behind only Bo bashet is gone and you know two of the free agents you did go and bring in are replacing two other solid productive veteran players so the hope is that ikf and Justin Turner can bring what Maryfield and belt brought and we haven't even talked about making up for what you've lost with Chapman here so I mean the other challenges we've talked about this before too I mean as many things went wrong last year vlat Alejandro Kirk Dalton Baro didn't have a great year George Springer a lot of things went right as well so I mean the pitching staff was fantastic fantastic they had a really good bill of health you're kind of now hoping that all that stuff happens again with the pitching and defense the good health the good results and you're hoping the offense improves so you need a bunch of players to bounce back so that you can be at least as good as last year but you're doing that without one of your best players so Imagining the Blue Jays not just you know improving um from year to year like them being better in 2024 it's it's sort of getting hard to wrap your head around them being as good as they were last year which is this is the first time we've come into a season thinking is this team even going to be better than the one we just watched and I'm honestly not sure yeah I'm just not sold on it remember the year they lost to Seattle that winter was all about okay no more of this going up swinging out of your shoes trying to let the long ball save you every night we're going to become a fundamentally Better Baseball team and then the talk after losing to Minnesota was like whoa okay they they the pendulum swung too far to the other side they didn't have enough pop they didn't have enough any really players who could step up in a big moment and make plays and it was okay this winter is going to be all about getting somewhere back to the middle and they just flat out didn't do that so we're looking at another year where we're watching a team whose bread and butter will be defense even though You' lost Matt Chapman and pitching which again a lot when you want to talk about things that went right pitching staff that stayed more or less 100% healthy and had bounce Backs from Brios and Kikuchi a lot went right there but kumy as we switch gears a little bit I want to talk about the pitching staff here because there are some headlines out of spring training surrounding that mainly on the injury front Alec Manoa has a quote cranky right shoulder I don't really know what that means there's some discomfort but the fact that he did not look good in his first outing and is now sitting on the sidelines not throwing and I know eventually I think at some point this week they said he's going to get back on the mound but that is really not good this is a disastrous start to the spring for monoa yeah that's uh really definitely not what you want to see I mean we can probably look past the first outing at least you can kind of gain some positives you can be like all right the velocity was good the command was nowhere to be found but at least there was one thing to lean into it felt like his slider had a bit more life felt like the velocity was there Alec monoa spoke about it after and he drew some positives from it the Blue Jays did too so you think all right this is solid like the the results weren't there but whatever it's a spring training game there's some process that we can give a thumbs up to but now it's like well after finding that extra veloc in a start he's now dealing with arm some arm issues so you're kind of wondering this goes all the way back to last year and us not really actually ever knowing what fully went on with Alec monoa like you know he was named opening day starter had the rough start had a terrible run and then got sent down to the Florida complex League he came back up seemed to think that when he was back up he was going to run the rest of the way made a hand full of starts real mixed bag they send him down to make room on the roster pen Ryu and we knowah doesn't come back for the rest of the year and then there's that conundrum between him and the team is he supposed to be in Triple A Buffalo is he supposed to be on the injured reserve you know is he actually injured he thought he was the team didn't they were getting all those extra checks have they actually really completely figured out what is going wrong here or is this just like the problems that were there last year have just lingered all the way into this year it it The Saga is so bizarre to me that I'm I I I just really don't know what to expect and I think it's kind of difficult given everything that's gone on to be optimistic about it but maybe that's just you know the Vibes don't feel great right now and everything's kind of just like Matt Chapman just signed elsewhere The Vibes don't feel fantastic maybe we're just letting that leak everywhere but for me it's just I don't know it's I'm not I I I have a hard time feeling optimistic about this situation yeah so monoa he's not throwing tan I know they said he's gonna I think he was scheduled to throw at some point this weekend or in the next coming days Uriel Rodriguez still hasn't thrown a ball for the Toronto Blue Jays and I was reading Keegan mat's piece over at mlb.com the other day and he talked about in a couple examples he used like remember when Alejandro Kirk was banged up got a late start than last year he just never really found momentum he spent the whole year it felt like trying to play catchup and Matson pointed out the year you say kuche became a blue jay he signed late he got a late start in Spring and then just never really played catchup like we've seen examples of guys who I know it's easy right now to just be like ah it's spring like who cares as long as they're ready for opening day like that's fine but being ready for opening day and being on the same level as everyone else on opening day are kind of two different things and it's happened in the past and I mean the history is a good indicator of the future if you're behind in spring training it can be tough to get back everything and be back on the same level as everyone come opening day the nice part for the Jays is that it looks like they do actually have a little bit of depth and one name that just keeps popping up is Bowden Francis we've heard his teammates praise him over and over again we're hearing great things about him from the front office and the management and you kind of sit and look back at last year kumy a 1.73 erra over just a hair over 36 Innings like maybe we aren't giving Bowden Francis enough love as like a legitimate MLB option this year a guy who could not just be you know a dude who eats innings for you but a guy who can be elite and impactful Elite stretch impactful impactful yeah like I mean it he kind of looks like the arm that could fill that that raw strippling role that they wanted to fill it with Mitch white it was like all right Ross stripping is going to leave he's going to cash in on his payday a great season in 2022 and they went out and acquired Mitch white at that that same Year's trade deadline had a couple years of control left and it's like all right this guy's going to be the number six starter the bullpen arm who who goes back and forth whenever it's necessary and that hasn't really worked out thus far though there are some positive signs about Mitch white his velocity is way up for the first time since he was in the LA Dodgers organization so maybe that's something but between him and Bowden Francis think that this year they will have someone to fill that role because that was such a blind spot on the team last year like we just got finished talking about the monoa situation and he goes down to the complex league in June and the team had to operate for like a month almost two months with with the four four and a half man rotation essentially because it was Francis and Trevor Richards doing the piggyback thing every fifth day and then you know your Bullpen goes from eight to six guys basically because if those two combined to throw six Innings then they obviously can't come out of the pen the next day but it's an interesting situation because you know if things do continue to kind of snowball South from monoa here there's an arm issue he isn't able to throw it keeps getting pushed back you never know like knock on would that this is fine but it does seem this year like there are more options to to kind of fill that spot and I mean for somebody like Francis coming off of the momentum that was last year and how good he was and he obviously probably earned some trust from John Schneider and Pete Walker I don't think it's unreasonable to think right if Alec monoa has a rough rough spring training then there are two guys there one of which Mitch white is out of options I don't think the Blue Jays are going to be afraid necessarily to have one of those guys be the fif starter and we heard the talk from John Schneider coming into this year about monoa was he's got to come into camp and earn it this guy's n they have no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt I could still see there being some lingering frustration with the way things were handled by manoah's Camp and monoa last year so yeah it's far from a lock when you consider the injuries what Bowden Francis did this year how he's looked early on in Spring that it's like he could very well be their fifth starter coming out of of out of the spring guys like Paulo Espino he's looked great so far through five innings this spring Connor Cooks looked good Mitch white looked good Chad Dallas their number 13 Prospect has looked good like you kind of go down the list and it's like they're actually and it's early days of spring training you're facing a lot of single a double a caliber hitters so that it that needs to be included in the conversation but still while we're sitting here ragging on the group of fielders and hitters they might have the group of arms actually might be really really deep and it could lead to them having potentially a really good Bullpen this year yeah I mean like the the whole thing is the Blue Jays are supposed to become like a pitching Factory that's the whole the complex in dened and all of this you look at chyro Atkins they background in Cleveland what Cleveland did well was pitching they were a run supression team that's what they brought to Toronto with a bigger budget and I mean you'd think now we're the the the complex has been open for a few years the Blue Jays should start to see the benefit of that as time goes along we're getting to a point now where you know we should start to see these arms that people have been talking about this luges are going to be one of those teams that's a pitching factor and they pump out arms so we should be at that point soon where where where you're just like funneling these names up into the major league roster be nice it would be nice get ready to watch a lot of 3-1 ball games this year kumy it's gonna be fun shout out to batana while we riding with the under a lot this year uh last kind of story line I wanted to hit on with you uh Garrett Cole pissing his pants over a home run Trot in spring training is remarkably on brand for Garrick Cole uh vogelbach first off Daniel vogelbach takes him deep so maybe that's a maybe that's this year's Brandon Belt it's Daniel vogle back who uh think called himself Danny poutine at one point uh he goes yard that's great to see I don't know if he's actually a factor for the major league team but Daniel vobach a larger gentleman for those who may not know ran the bases relatively slow and Garrick Cole After the game on Daniel vog slow Trot in the first inning quote yeah what's the day are we still in February March 1st yeah he enjoyed that Homer and then he said quote I don't forget a lot of things I like Garett colean shut up yeah I don't know man like this is a you're the reigning American League Sai Young winner you had the best season in the American League for a pitcher by by a pretty wide margin last season unanimously won the award coming into this year here's a guy on a minor league contract who's I don't know trying to impress his new teammates trying to like get in and be a part of the groove like trying to have some fun in the late February baseball game and you just can't handle it I don't know man it was a beautiful home run it was a beautiful it was one of those perfect like left-handed sweet swings where you can just tell as soon as it's touched like if this thing stays fair then it's gone and it's like you can see exactly why the Blue Jays would want to have Daniel vocal back like on the roster we didn't see very many times last season where someone took a pitcher Garrick Cole like a good right-hander and just took him yard like that there were very many times where that happened last season so you can see why the Jays would want to header like this he had 13 bombs last season and had a 742 Ops I mean if we're talking about figuring out how to replace Matt Chapman's offense he wasn't a world beater offensively last year but that's still like a you know a 750 Ops and 20 bombs 20 doubles so you know maybe vogle back could be the 15 home run guy the Blue Jays need but who knows that's a that's a nice start for him I I I I don't blame the guy for taking a slow TR after hitting a home run like that just if you're Garrett Cole what you should recognize is like this is a compliment to you man like Daniel vogle back is proud of himself for hitting a home run off of you just view it that way stop being such a ah it's just so unbrand also like Daniel vobach doesn't run that well so the idea that like him of all players didn't hustle enough around the bases is just like hilarious but yeah I mean whatever get over yourself Garrett Colt absolutely Daniel vobach maybe he ends up being a factor for the Toronto Blue Jays this year and they're going to need two or three guys like that who we again are down on right now or aren't talking about impact pieces and are turning thing end up turning into valuable parts of uh of the lineup so yeah there you go spring training headlines Sai Young pitcher losing his mind oh one other thing on that so G Cole's angry that Daniel vok like whatever slow Trot they were playing that game at the Yankees spring training ballpark when the Yankees were hitting home runs and scoring runs they were doing the thing with the lights where they flash the lights and like turn them on and off that they do in stadiums and it's like all right you kind of lose some credibility like whoa It's March like what's this guy's problem and then your home team is like flashing the lights on spring training home runs it's kind of like me that's kind of lame I don't know I know Garr Cole obviously doesn't control that but it just adds to it a little bit makes it a little bit funnier uh any other story lines you're watching here kumy to wrap up this pod something you want to keep an eye on the next seven days of Spring ball I guess the thing to look at now is who's going to be the best internal option to if if someone's going to bounce and come up from the miners and like give the Blue Jays what they're losing with Matt Chapman who is the most likely won like John Schneider said this is going to be some cool puzzle to solve and it's a whole bunch of names that we saw before like you know cin beio Santiago espanol and then ikf it's very similar to what they had in 2021 you remember it was it didn't have a real third basement at that time but also you had Market semi and playing second so it's a bit different but now I think the prospect pool the players are a bit further along and it's like there's more depth at the upper levels of the miners that maybe they could compensate but I'm not sure who it's going to be is it going to be an arur Albus Martinez Addison Barger is maybe like a David Schneider gonna find a home there or is this finally going to be the year that you know the buo Espanol platoon winds up just being really good and both of them are good at the same time and it's wow we got a lefty and a righty they're both good defensively this is great honestly who knows there's a lot of internal options at least it'll be interesting to follow all right and we will be here as news continues to break not that we're expecting anything significant but we'll keep up with the updates throughout spring training we wanted to do a quick little 20 minute pod here on the weekend just to go over the coal thing the Chapman signing all of that kind of stuff so once again a big big shout out to our friends over at bano9 plus please play responsibly the game starts now at ban.com we'll chat later on in the week best wishes thanks for tuning in to Blue Jays Nation radio don't forget to like And subscribe wherever you get your podcast from to never miss an episode