DUNEDIN, FLORIDA – APRIL 02: Matt Chapman #26 of the Toronto Blue Jays celebrates with teammates … [+]
Perpetuating a rebuild with still no end in sight, the Oakland A’s traded then-28-year-old former All-Star third baseman Matt Chapman to the Toronto Blue Jays back in March 2022, their third trade in a week. The other two saw them move Chris Bassitt to the New York Mets, and fellow star infielder Matt Olson to the Atlanta Braves; in all three cases, the pricier established veteran was being moved for the cheaper, more numerous yet unproven young talent.
The concept of trading old for young is a tale as old as sport, and is neither new nor wrong. However, the degree to which the A’s have run with it over the last two seasons – and particularly over the course of that one week – has been extreme. And in all candour, the Matt Chapman trade was not so much one of “old for young” as it was one of “expensive for cheap”.
To be sure, Chapman had not been at his best in the 2021 season. Striking out more than 200 times, his OPS had plummeted to .716, by far the lowest mark of his career, and he was performing far below the standards of his All-Star 2019 season, when he finished sixth in the American League’s Most Valuable Player vote.
That said, while he was not at his career apex, he was still a good Major League player with time to remedy that slump. And in his two seasons with the Blue Jays, that is what he has done, fixing the strikeout leak enough to post seasons of 116 and 108 OPS+ respectively (albeit with a decline in his once-stellar defence at the hot corner).
While not back to his very best and now into his 30s, Chapman remains an above-average Major Leaguer, and were he still in Oakland’s extremely anaemic hitting line-up, he would be the best player in it. Notwithstanding the fact that it would be an extremely relative accolade, it is a useful yardstick nonetheless; the team that cannot hit needs more hitters like this to stop losing 100 games a season. In terms of what the Athletics got back, though, the returns are looking bleak.
Oakland returned four players for Chapman, and one of them is already gone. Starting pitcher Zach Logue was lit up in 14 Major League appearances for the A’s, and struggled even more at the Triple-A level with the hitter-friendly Las Vegas Aviators. He was cut in the winter of 2022 to open up a roster spot for Drew Ruczinski – whose injury-shortened 2023 performance was even worse – and after struggling across both levels in the Detroit Tigers association last season, the now-30 Logue currently finds himself out of baseball altogether.
Of those still in the A’s organisation, one more is right on the cusp of leaving. Reliever Kirby Snead was this week outrighted off of the 40-man roster after a 2023 campaign in which he struggled through injuries to a 1.71 WHIP in his Major League time, plus far worse results in Vegas. Turning 30 partway through next season, he has not got prospect status any more, and needs a quick second wind to avoid going the same way as Logue. Four up, two down.
A third returnee was infielder Kevin Smith, who has also yet to make it work at the Major League level. Across 306 at-bats in the majors, he is hitting only .173, striking out once every three times, with a 7:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. In the minors, Smith has been a free-swinging power-hitting player at the middle infield spots, including a 1.026 OPS last season with the Aviators; at some point, though, the potential has to become reality for a player who will turn 28 by the start of next season, and who has had several chances already.
The fourth returning player was by far the youngest; starting pitcher Gunnar Hoglund, the Blue Jays’s first-round draft pick in 2021, who at the time of the trade had yet to make his debut in the minors while recovering from Tommy John surgery. His inclusion in the deal represented the best (if not only) actual Major League prospect for Oakland, albeit one still with plenty to do. However, he too will have to make many strides in double-quick time; in his first full professional season last year, he was lit up for a 7.48 ERA across 12 starts of Single-A baseball.
As things stand, then, a consistently above-average MLB player with power and defence was traded for no major leaguers whatsoever. There is still time for Hoglund – and, as a long shot, Smith – to change that. But both the odds and the passage of time are against it.
Therefore, there remains an increasingly unavoidable truth. Whereas arguments can be and were made that the trades of Olson, Sean Murphy, Luis Castillo and others were done with a significant focus on the quality of the returning young players, and not merely financial motivations, it is nigh-on impossible to make the same case for the trade of Matt Chapman. In dealing him, the A’s removed the obligation to give him a big contract – he had earned $6,490,000 in arbitration in 2021, and signed a two-year, $25 million deal with the Jays the week after arriving – in exchange for three minimum-salary deals and the $3.2 million signing bonus of Hoglund.
They saved approximately $20 million over the life of the deal. And it appears as though that will be all they get.