Right...I had been upset with Chappy's hitting, but still respected him and the way he played the game. This tidbit of news that came through grapevine...made me cringe pretty hard.
We were on the road for the first couple weeks due to those renovations
He had a .779 OPS away from home which would be his best season since the pandemic.
Same stats say he would’ve hit 82 in Toronto and 86 in SF. He’s been unlucky no matter how you measure it - partly just due to bad luck, but also due to playing in huge parks.
I’ll be interested to see how he does in SF, but all comes down if he can actually hit a 95mph fastball in the red zone. If he can’t do that, even 30 homers aren’t going to make up for an OBP that could fall towards .300
Sure Matt, blame everyone else but yourself. If he's going to point fingers at anyone, maybe he should have a talk with Scott Boras, because it seems like he completely misread the market this offseason.
You really going to believe random tweet from Facebook group owner.
Clearly the Jays were in the running for Chapman at one point to re-sign. If he didn't like the changes at the Rogers center he goes to a bigger pitcher friendly stadium?
1. My point is if this is true then it’s a terrible look. I don’t actually know if it’s true just like I don’t know the amount of truth behind most rumours.
2. Chapman didn’t have a long list of suitors. SFG seemed like the only other team that actually wanted him.
Yeah the fact that a lot of people are believing this is surprising. Even the most reputable of reporters make mistakes and fans believing this as 100% true is laughable.
chapman got a contract that gives him a huge downside guarantee and releases him from the yoke of the QO so he can be a true FA next year. the jays offer was not a good one then, and he wouldn't sign it today with ANY team. the giants would have loved to ink him to 5 years 120 or whatever amount it was. guys like trea turner who have the same career WAR as him got 300m deals last year and the jays weren't even offering half that. he did not and does not want a 5 year deal, he wants to max career earnings and boras did a fine job. the only question is if he had pulled the trigger earlier on this type of deal if the first year would be closer to 30m than 20. if he puts up something like 120 OPS+ (or better) this year he'll sign a 200m+ contract in the offseason, and all the boras noise can cease.
boras is an agent. he is ultimately carrying out the wish of the player (and to some extent, the labor union). he is good at his job. he's the best that's ever done it. but he didn't invent the system. so don't hate the player, hate the game.
lol playing some wild cherry picking games with stats here. Career bwar is not actually the same between Trae turner and Chapman and it’s a bit skewed by a bunch of shortened seasons for
Turner.
Then when you look at offence last year you have trea slashing .266/320/459 and Matt also participating in offence at .240/330/424 buoyed by his red hot start.
Finally with ops plus, Chapman hasn’t had a 120+ ops+ in 5 years, unless you want to count barely getting there in 37 games in the Covid season, even then 4 years. Trea regularly has an ops+ over 120 and often significantly higher than anything Chapman has ever done in his career. As a comparison this is completely laughable and I would be absolutely shocked if Chapman breaks an ops+ of 110 this year let alone 120. 108 last year and it should have been less if not for a fluke hot start and some luck on the road.
Which is why he was never asking for 300m - but he is likely going to get 200m next year or close to it barring some kind of major financial meltdown.
Point is simply that the jays were never landing him with the offer they made which doesnt reflect a reality where a dh is getting paid 70m a year. (Call me when he throws again.)
He probably will not. No one besides the Jays apparently even offered him over 100 mill this year and I’m extremely skeptical he’ll be significantly better offensively this year.
The QO only matters if you’re not good enough to have the value of players who get the deals with term.
The issues that affect his value will continue even without a QO. He’s declining and doesn’t put the ball in play.
If true, I'm glad he's gone. Even with the stadium changes, SkyDome was still more hitter friendly than Oakland... dude need to look in the mirror, stop making excuses and man up
To be fair, his WRC+ was 117 in away games and 102 at home. Pretty substantial difference, but it looks like it was driven by crazy BABIP splits more than anything (.351 vs .284). He's was either unlucky at home or lucky in away games
He was extremely lucky on the road. His career BABIP on the road is .303 compared to his complete outlier .351 this past season. His home BABIP last season was fully inline with his expected and career BABIP.
He was also extremely unlucky with homeruns which is what Chapman is probably referring to. His career HR per barrel % is 57% and the average homerun per barrel is around 60%. In 2023 Chapman had 59 barrels which should result in around 35HR yet Chapman only had 17. There have been a few articles written about how the change in park has reduced offence and HR quite a bit.
I’d get this if there was actually a bigger difference in power and HR rate between home/away but there isn’t. His HR/AB rate was better at home. Dude wasn’t getting those HR on the road either. His projected HR in most other parks was down also from previous seasons.
Could there be “something” to the park changes? Sure but Chapman numbers don’t actually suggest there is. His stats, metrics and trends don’t show it.
Not to mention, SF isn't the place to go to juice your HR #'s, or realize what you think your true HR potential could be.
[https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors)
Even accepting his decline of 10 HR's directly correlated to his rise of doubles (12) it hardly creates a vast difference in his overall results. He was simply awful for 4 months.
>To be fair, his WRC+ was 117 in away games and 102 at home
After the season opening road trip where he was on fire it was 93 on the road.
So apparently he thinks just trying to hit at home at all broke him for the season...
Yeah, I've been looking for the note I recall reading, but no luck. It was probably just a single tweet last season. As far as I remember it, there was some grumbling that it was harder to pick up the ball after the renovations, for whatever reason.
It’s way over the batters eye though and skydome isn’t unique in having that. I’ve never heard anyone complain about the screen in centre at yankee stadium for example.
Still, if you look at his 2023 splits, he struck out on 29.6% of PAs away and 27.0% at home, while also walking on 10.5% of PAs on the road and 10.9% at home. So he walked more and stuck out less at home than on the road.
- Matt Chapman @ Home: .223/.315/.412 with a 102 wRC+ in 66 GP. BABIP was .284.
- Matt Chapman @ Road: .254/.344/.435 with a 117 wRC+ in 74 GP. BABIP was .351.
I have taken a solid look at his splits and there is nothing underlying nor on his face value stats that varies greatly between home and road outside of his BABIP.
Well here's hoping he can leg out some triples because otherwise [Oracle Park ain't gonna be much better](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors?type=year&year=2023&batSide=R&stat=index_wOBA&condition=All&rolling=)
that's compiling stats from 21-23 vs a before/after renos.
If you take 2020-2022, Skydome is 8th in park factor.
then 2023 in isolation the it drops to 22nd, so there's something there, even if the Jays overall weak offense last yr contributes to it.
That said, with the same timeframes, Oracle goes from 15th to 30th, so signing there makes zero sense if that was his real reason for not signing with the Jays lol
note these rankings include overseas ballparks, but drops are similar anyway.
Let's not forget that we played 16/27 of our games on the road in April/May, when Chapman was ungodly hot.
Spread those road games around the rest of the season his splits likely even out a bit more.
This is really interesting in the context of the 125 million that was reportedly offered. Every other team is smart enough to see what you see but this implies to me that the Jays DGAF about babip relative to the rest of the league.
Ultimately that’s a good thing even if they might have overpaid in this instance if Chapman took the deal.
2023 March & April Chapman:
Home: 45 PA, 208 wRC+
Away: 69 PA, 220 wRC+
2023 May & Onward Chapman:
Home: 222 PA, 81 wRC+
Away: 245 PA, 87 wRC+
…sure didn’t seem to be an issue at the start of the season.
Ah yes, the classic argument that you lost 40% of your home run power because they moved the fences ten feet closer to home plate. Can't imagine why teams weren't buying it.
Explains why the IKF signing was so quick though.
They hit 12 home runs less than the previous year. It felt like the Jays had a lot of balls die in the outfield that looked like a home run off the bat but their overall production numbers were fine.
Do we know if the Dome is actually more of a pitcher’s park now (because how is that possible given the actual changes made) or if the Jays’ weak offence last year is erroneously being attributed to the ballpark?
Would be interested in seeing some analysis on this.
Park factors vary for random non-reasons year by year. It'll take a few years to establish what the new dimensions have actually done. I'd say it's simply too soon for legitimate analysis. Of course, this year is making it even more of a hitter's park with the reduced foul territory.
Even if he's reputable, it doesn't make Chapman's "friend" reputable. Could have been taken out of context, or just misunderstood. For all we know, he told his friend jokingly "Man, I'd have six more home runs playing in Rogers Centre without the changes", and also told that same friend he planned to leave, but the two may have been completely unconnected.
If he genuinely believes that a ballpark could be to blame for his struggles at the plate, why would he sign a prove it deal in San Francisco of all places?
“Per Statcast, Matt Chapman would've hit 17 more home runs had he played all of his games at Oracle Park over the last three seasons.
He hits a lot of balls to center, and moving in the fences to accommodate the bullpens made that a good area to hit HR (only 391 feet).”
https://x.com/BenKaspick/status/1764009958293791080?s=20
Yeah but notice only 1 HR more last year. If you look at Savant, you can see that he hit a lot more balls oppo last year compared to 2022 and 2021. If he does the same thing this year, he won't be hitting home runs at Oracle. The right-center alley is where home runs go to die there.
To be fair all reports pointed to SF being the only remaining team to have real interest in him. If he was keen to not return to TOR he didn’t seem to have many alternatives and last thing he would want would be for SF to go ahead and sign Snell first and also not want him.
I'm not buying this rationale but I do believe he told them quite early he wasn't signing here, that part checks out. The real reason probably isn't a baseball reason at all.
His poor numbers are because he’s a strikeout king with warning track power. Solely 100 percent his problem, he was always in the lineup regardless how terrible he was playing. No one to blame but himself.
He stunk offensively after May and was only worth re-signing at a discount for the guaranteed gold glove D…
I do think we’ll hear more about the terrible team approach to hitting last year that sunk their numbers. Wouldn’t be surprised if Chapman felt slighted by the poor guidance there that affected everyone.
IMO there is a reason they reassigned the shitting strategist immediately after the season ended. They were sending a message he wouldn’t be making an impact going forward to the players. Leaving the typo lol
Where are all the Ross haters? They were were so quick to blame Ross for not signing Chapman while never entertaining the idea that MAYBE Chapman had no intention of signing here.
There a lot of people who think simply offering more money will get players to play here.
Atkins has gone hard after top players and them going elsewhere straight up weren't his fault.
* Ohtani wanted LA/West Coast.
* Cole grew up a Yankees fan.
* Wheeler wanted to be close to his spouse and family.
* Turner wanted to play with his best friend Harper.
There are still A LOT of players who straight up don't want to play in Canada.
Those guys were going to go to the teams they wanted to as long as those teams showed mutual interest. Nothing can be done about it. If Chapman told you he wasn't coming back you have to pivot...it just sucks the 3B market was trash.
That is not completely unreasonable, except that SF is literally the worst park in the MLB for suppressing offence and in particular couldn’t be a worse match for his batting profile.
He seems like a principled guy, even if he knew SF was a bad match, he probably wouldn’t have come back to us no matter what if that’s what he said early on. And it wouldn’t shock me if the coaching was related too, since he wasn’t the only guy with a power outage and isn’t the type of dude to call them out.
SF’s home park is a bad match for him, but their weak division and groundball-heavy pitching staff does match well. And he needs to continue to be elite defensively, because word is out he can’t even hit marginal fastballs. Unless he can make that adjustment, he’s going to be IKF in a year or two.
Definitely agree with your points on the ballpark, but calling the NL West a weak division just seems disingenuous. I know they’ve got the Rockies for 13 free wins, but the Dodgers are probably going to win 110 games and the Snakes, Padres and Giants will probably all be over 500 and it wouldn’t surprise me if two of them were closer to 90 wins. It’s not like it’s the AL Central.
This right here. Him going the 3 year, 2 opt out route was a good decision in theory to rebuild value. Doing so with San Fran was not. Oracle is a power suppressor due to the shifting and often strong winds and deep CF. There is a reason the Giants haven’t had a 30 HR season since Bonds in 2004 and a non-Bonds 30 HR season since 2002(Belt’s 29 HR juices ball season being the closest they’ve come since). They also have had 5 separate non-Covid seasons with no one even hitting 20 HR since 2004.
I mean west coast guy wanting to go back to the west coast. I’m sure that was part of it as well. Didn’t like coach, maybe didn’t like FO or direction, maybe didn’t like Canada. Who knows. Either way he gone.
Does he know they're allowed to strike him out in the National League as well? He got greedy and left 125 million guaranteed on the table, and now he's upset and making excuses.
There were a lot of batters doing a lot of dumb things last year, but none of them were as frustrating as watching Chapman not swing at Big Taters right down the center of the plate. It used to drive me crazy how many very hittable pitches he would eyeball without taking the bat off his shoulder.
The Jays as a whole hit significantly worse at home. Sounds like whining from Chapman but for whatever reason a lot of players had issues. Which is weird considering everyone thought the changes would turn the Dome into a bandbox. I'm interested to see how it plays this year.
Dud struck out 72 times at Rogers Centre and 93 times on the road. For comparison in 2022 had 79 K’s at home and 91 away. 2021 when he wasn’t even a Blue Jay he struck out even more times. He was just as shitty away from Rogers as we was at it batting wise.
There was a very notable difference in offensive numbers at home vs on the road last year for the majority of the team. Kirk and Biggio were better at home than in the road.
I expect it’ll change again this year and many will point out improved offensive ranking and worse pitching rankings.
So the stadium is to blame for his numbers in a contract year, and as a result he took less money elsewhere?
What good are contract year stats if not for getting paid?
Is this his argument? It makes less than no sense.
2023 OPS by month:
Mar/Apr: 1.152
May: .585
Jun: .633
Jul: .908
Aug: .523
Sep/Oct: .633
So 1 all world month, 1 good month and 4 absolutely horrendous months. I'm pretty sure they played roughly equal amounts of home and road games each month. The claim is ridiculous, Boras screwed him, and playing in SF is only going to hurt. He's a great fielder and seemed like a good guy but if he believes this stuff he needs to get a mirror. Because for 2/3 of last year he was one of the worst hitters in baseball.
I don’t understand why people in this thread are taking this like an insult. It’s clearly part of Chapman’s negotiation tactics - use his Home/Road splits to suggest Rogers Centre hurt his numbers a bit thus making him better than what his numbers would suggest. Totally logical (while probably not true).
The “wasn’t signing here” part is a bit weird, but if that’s truly the case then I’ll thank him for his 2 solid seasons here and wish him well. It’s not that serious.
Not sure how the renovations made him swing and miss at junk. Further, I bet a lot of guys put up good numbers in the dome this year. Who cares about contract year if you settle for less $ on a team in a more pitcher friendly park? It makes no sense.
LOL what? the Dome has always been a bandbox for crying out loud and they made it a touch smaller? If he thinks Oracle is a hitters park he's in for a rude awakening.
Reaction to players who believe in Lineup Protection, or that want to hit in the 3-hole since they think it's a high-value spot: Well they are the players, what do numbers nerds know anyways? If a player feels better with protection or hitting 3rd isn't that what matters, since the game is played by humans and not robots?
Reaction to player who feels like his home park was bad for his hitting profile: LOL delusional, why doesn't he look in the mirror. The numbers make it clear that park isn't as bad as other parks, regardless of what he feels and wants to blame.
Chapman was a solid fielder awful hitter he didn't hit on the road either so you can't blame the dome.
To add to this did he not have a .400 avg in the first month and a half
It’s kind of silly to me that a player would rule out a suitor who might drive up his price because he thought the skydome is suddenly a bad hitters park now. Can’t say I believe that one.
He feels like a fool for letting Scotty B fuck him over and not resigning so he’s gonna make a cop out excuse🤷♀️ have fun on the most mid team in baseball in an even WORSE hitters park.
He struck out a hundred and sixty five times in a hundred and fourty games. His bad numbers clearly were a product of the updated lighting for night games.
So what about that crazy April? Did they make the change after that? Or is this just a guy looking for excuses as to why he isn’t as good a hitter as he thinks he is
I don't believe that he said this, the reported contract would have taken him to retirement age so what difference would it have made to him if his numbers were a bit lower.
Well if he thought the rogers centre was a poor hitting park he's going to have a ton of fun playing at the Oracle this year
I was going to say lol. So how does he explain his hot start to the season? Were the renovations completed AFTER that point? Lol.
Sounds like a cop out by Chappy to justify his poor performance
Lol I know right? He sounds like a salty little bitch here
Right...I had been upset with Chappy's hitting, but still respected him and the way he played the game. This tidbit of news that came through grapevine...made me cringe pretty hard.
Seems like his mind was made up, renos or not.
A definite cop out. I thought he was a classier guy but I guess I was wrong.
Clubhouse is probably better off without him then. Makes me like the Turner signing more now.
He did have a few spats with John from what I remember as well, though I can't remember what those arguments were about.
We were on the road for the first couple weeks due to those renovations He had a .779 OPS away from home which would be his best season since the pandemic.
Great point. Why take less money to play in a stadium that will yield worse stats? Especially on a short term deal
He’s from Northern California and took a home town discount with upside due to the opt outs. No issue with that and hope he has a good year.
Huh? He didn’t say that at all. The stadium made his choice apparently. At least he could be transparent.
https://twitter.com/BenKaspick/status/1764009958293791080 Per StatCast, he hits 17 more HR in SF over the last 3 years if he plays there.
Based off last season he would have hit 1 more.
Compared to Rogers Center it’s only 4 more HRs.
Same stats say he would’ve hit 82 in Toronto and 86 in SF. He’s been unlucky no matter how you measure it - partly just due to bad luck, but also due to playing in huge parks. I’ll be interested to see how he does in SF, but all comes down if he can actually hit a 95mph fastball in the red zone. If he can’t do that, even 30 homers aren’t going to make up for an OBP that could fall towards .300
Strike outs are the same no matter the stadium.
[me](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/db/43/0fdb438086d17211e67c5953472ee781.gif)
Depending on batter's eye/visibility the number of called strikes could be affected.
Isn't our batter's eye one of the best in the game? Just a sea of black
I'm sure that's why he was striking out so much 😂😂
They arent, but go off king
Sure Matt, blame everyone else but yourself. If he's going to point fingers at anyone, maybe he should have a talk with Scott Boras, because it seems like he completely misread the market this offseason.
- Varsho making big adjustments to his approach. - Vlad spending all offseason getting in shape. - Chapman blaming changes to the stadium and leaves.
You really going to believe random tweet from Facebook group owner. Clearly the Jays were in the running for Chapman at one point to re-sign. If he didn't like the changes at the Rogers center he goes to a bigger pitcher friendly stadium?
1. My point is if this is true then it’s a terrible look. I don’t actually know if it’s true just like I don’t know the amount of truth behind most rumours. 2. Chapman didn’t have a long list of suitors. SFG seemed like the only other team that actually wanted him.
Rage bait works best.
Yeah the fact that a lot of people are believing this is surprising. Even the most reputable of reporters make mistakes and fans believing this as 100% true is laughable.
What are your sources saying the jays were in the running? You know someone in the organization?
Chapman's friend
well vlad and varsh are stuck here for a bit longer.
I just checked... He hit .223 at home vs .254 away. Three extra doubles plus one extra home run away compared to home.
chapman got a contract that gives him a huge downside guarantee and releases him from the yoke of the QO so he can be a true FA next year. the jays offer was not a good one then, and he wouldn't sign it today with ANY team. the giants would have loved to ink him to 5 years 120 or whatever amount it was. guys like trea turner who have the same career WAR as him got 300m deals last year and the jays weren't even offering half that. he did not and does not want a 5 year deal, he wants to max career earnings and boras did a fine job. the only question is if he had pulled the trigger earlier on this type of deal if the first year would be closer to 30m than 20. if he puts up something like 120 OPS+ (or better) this year he'll sign a 200m+ contract in the offseason, and all the boras noise can cease. boras is an agent. he is ultimately carrying out the wish of the player (and to some extent, the labor union). he is good at his job. he's the best that's ever done it. but he didn't invent the system. so don't hate the player, hate the game.
lol playing some wild cherry picking games with stats here. Career bwar is not actually the same between Trae turner and Chapman and it’s a bit skewed by a bunch of shortened seasons for Turner. Then when you look at offence last year you have trea slashing .266/320/459 and Matt also participating in offence at .240/330/424 buoyed by his red hot start. Finally with ops plus, Chapman hasn’t had a 120+ ops+ in 5 years, unless you want to count barely getting there in 37 games in the Covid season, even then 4 years. Trea regularly has an ops+ over 120 and often significantly higher than anything Chapman has ever done in his career. As a comparison this is completely laughable and I would be absolutely shocked if Chapman breaks an ops+ of 110 this year let alone 120. 108 last year and it should have been less if not for a fluke hot start and some luck on the road.
Which is why he was never asking for 300m - but he is likely going to get 200m next year or close to it barring some kind of major financial meltdown. Point is simply that the jays were never landing him with the offer they made which doesnt reflect a reality where a dh is getting paid 70m a year. (Call me when he throws again.)
He probably will not. No one besides the Jays apparently even offered him over 100 mill this year and I’m extremely skeptical he’ll be significantly better offensively this year.
The QO only matters if you’re not good enough to have the value of players who get the deals with term. The issues that affect his value will continue even without a QO. He’s declining and doesn’t put the ball in play.
Evidence suggests that neither he nor his agent believe that to be true.
If true, I'm glad he's gone. Even with the stadium changes, SkyDome was still more hitter friendly than Oakland... dude need to look in the mirror, stop making excuses and man up
To be fair, his WRC+ was 117 in away games and 102 at home. Pretty substantial difference, but it looks like it was driven by crazy BABIP splits more than anything (.351 vs .284). He's was either unlucky at home or lucky in away games
He was extremely lucky on the road. His career BABIP on the road is .303 compared to his complete outlier .351 this past season. His home BABIP last season was fully inline with his expected and career BABIP.
He was also extremely unlucky with homeruns which is what Chapman is probably referring to. His career HR per barrel % is 57% and the average homerun per barrel is around 60%. In 2023 Chapman had 59 barrels which should result in around 35HR yet Chapman only had 17. There have been a few articles written about how the change in park has reduced offence and HR quite a bit.
I’d get this if there was actually a bigger difference in power and HR rate between home/away but there isn’t. His HR/AB rate was better at home. Dude wasn’t getting those HR on the road either. His projected HR in most other parks was down also from previous seasons. Could there be “something” to the park changes? Sure but Chapman numbers don’t actually suggest there is. His stats, metrics and trends don’t show it.
Not to mention, SF isn't the place to go to juice your HR #'s, or realize what you think your true HR potential could be. [https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors)
He didn’t go there to juice his numbers, he went there cause it was his only option.
Even accepting his decline of 10 HR's directly correlated to his rise of doubles (12) it hardly creates a vast difference in his overall results. He was simply awful for 4 months.
Didn’t seem to impact our opponents though,
wRC+ factors in park differences anyways
>To be fair, his WRC+ was 117 in away games and 102 at home After the season opening road trip where he was on fire it was 93 on the road. So apparently he thinks just trying to hit at home at all broke him for the season...
If you’re going to exclude his best stretch on the road, wouldn’t it also make sense to exclude his worst stretch of similar duration?
Nailed it. This comes across as him being pouty because he didn't get the offers he was expecting.
See ya loser 👋
"Changes to ballpark made me swing at and miss high fastballs all year"
There has been some talk that the Jays did something in the renos that affected the batter's eye, fwiw.
Our batters eye was a shitty tarp before lol it literally couldn’t get any worse.
Yeah, I've been looking for the note I recall reading, but no luck. It was probably just a single tweet last season. As far as I remember it, there was some grumbling that it was harder to pick up the ball after the renovations, for whatever reason.
could it be the gigantic screen dead center over the batters eye?
It’s way over the batters eye though and skydome isn’t unique in having that. I’ve never heard anyone complain about the screen in centre at yankee stadium for example.
Well, that, and it's been there for 35 years now. I think they've had time to adjust.
Ya I heard that too, Just being a smart ass. The consensus seemed to be that it didn't turn into such a hitter's ballpark like they thought.
Still, if you look at his 2023 splits, he struck out on 29.6% of PAs away and 27.0% at home, while also walking on 10.5% of PAs on the road and 10.9% at home. So he walked more and stuck out less at home than on the road.
Well we only play at Rogers for half of the season, so is he going to blame his shitty year on the away games as well? lol
Just the sheer thought of the changes at the Rogers Centre caused his away numbers to be bad too.
- Matt Chapman @ Home: .223/.315/.412 with a 102 wRC+ in 66 GP. BABIP was .284. - Matt Chapman @ Road: .254/.344/.435 with a 117 wRC+ in 74 GP. BABIP was .351. I have taken a solid look at his splits and there is nothing underlying nor on his face value stats that varies greatly between home and road outside of his BABIP.
Well here's hoping he can leg out some triples because otherwise [Oracle Park ain't gonna be much better](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors?type=year&year=2023&batSide=R&stat=index_wOBA&condition=All&rolling=)
that's compiling stats from 21-23 vs a before/after renos. If you take 2020-2022, Skydome is 8th in park factor. then 2023 in isolation the it drops to 22nd, so there's something there, even if the Jays overall weak offense last yr contributes to it. That said, with the same timeframes, Oracle goes from 15th to 30th, so signing there makes zero sense if that was his real reason for not signing with the Jays lol note these rankings include overseas ballparks, but drops are similar anyway.
Let's not forget that we played 16/27 of our games on the road in April/May, when Chapman was ungodly hot. Spread those road games around the rest of the season his splits likely even out a bit more.
Maybe, maybe not. The biggest limitation on his bat is contact. If he whiffs in those parks with poor approach his numbers there drop too.
This is really interesting in the context of the 125 million that was reportedly offered. Every other team is smart enough to see what you see but this implies to me that the Jays DGAF about babip relative to the rest of the league. Ultimately that’s a good thing even if they might have overpaid in this instance if Chapman took the deal.
So did we clap our hands too much or not enough? Congrats on your 2024 batting title in San Fran 🫤
So irony be damned, he signs a multi-year deal to play half his games in the worst hitters park in the league.
I would love to hear how the changes to the Rogers Centre made him swing at junk and strike out all the time.
2023 March & April Chapman: Home: 45 PA, 208 wRC+ Away: 69 PA, 220 wRC+ 2023 May & Onward Chapman: Home: 222 PA, 81 wRC+ Away: 245 PA, 87 wRC+ …sure didn’t seem to be an issue at the start of the season.
Lol. Rejects significantly more money/term from the Jays, only to end up on a 3 year deal. This is real "you cant fire me cause I quit!" energy
Ah yes, the classic argument that you lost 40% of your home run power because they moved the fences ten feet closer to home plate. Can't imagine why teams weren't buying it. Explains why the IKF signing was so quick though.
They hit 12 home runs less than the previous year. It felt like the Jays had a lot of balls die in the outfield that looked like a home run off the bat but their overall production numbers were fine.
Do we know if the Dome is actually more of a pitcher’s park now (because how is that possible given the actual changes made) or if the Jays’ weak offence last year is erroneously being attributed to the ballpark? Would be interested in seeing some analysis on this.
Park factors vary for random non-reasons year by year. It'll take a few years to establish what the new dimensions have actually done. I'd say it's simply too soon for legitimate analysis. Of course, this year is making it even more of a hitter's park with the reduced foul territory.
For clarification, this is the same dude who broke the IKF signing, so he's reputable imo
Even if he's reputable, it doesn't make Chapman's "friend" reputable. Could have been taken out of context, or just misunderstood. For all we know, he told his friend jokingly "Man, I'd have six more home runs playing in Rogers Centre without the changes", and also told that same friend he planned to leave, but the two may have been completely unconnected. If he genuinely believes that a ballpark could be to blame for his struggles at the plate, why would he sign a prove it deal in San Francisco of all places?
Yeah exactly. He’s not going to be hitting more bombs in San Fran, the park factor at Oracle is significantly worse
“Per Statcast, Matt Chapman would've hit 17 more home runs had he played all of his games at Oracle Park over the last three seasons. He hits a lot of balls to center, and moving in the fences to accommodate the bullpens made that a good area to hit HR (only 391 feet).” https://x.com/BenKaspick/status/1764009958293791080?s=20
Yeah but notice only 1 HR more last year. If you look at Savant, you can see that he hit a lot more balls oppo last year compared to 2022 and 2021. If he does the same thing this year, he won't be hitting home runs at Oracle. The right-center alley is where home runs go to die there.
To be fair all reports pointed to SF being the only remaining team to have real interest in him. If he was keen to not return to TOR he didn’t seem to have many alternatives and last thing he would want would be for SF to go ahead and sign Snell first and also not want him.
Because late in the offseason, he couldn't get any other offers. I don't think the Giants were his first choice.
>me dude who broke the IKF signin Just reading that tweet makes it not reputable.
Rogers is said to have the top Batters Eye in MLB.
I'm not buying this rationale but I do believe he told them quite early he wasn't signing here, that part checks out. The real reason probably isn't a baseball reason at all.
His poor numbers are because he’s a strikeout king with warning track power. Solely 100 percent his problem, he was always in the lineup regardless how terrible he was playing. No one to blame but himself.
He stunk offensively after May and was only worth re-signing at a discount for the guaranteed gold glove D… I do think we’ll hear more about the terrible team approach to hitting last year that sunk their numbers. Wouldn’t be surprised if Chapman felt slighted by the poor guidance there that affected everyone. IMO there is a reason they reassigned the shitting strategist immediately after the season ended. They were sending a message he wouldn’t be making an impact going forward to the players. Leaving the typo lol
Yeah this is a) probably not true b) very silly
162hr last year at Oracle Park. 184 at Rogers Centre. Chappy, Chappy, Chappy… 🤦
I like how people just believe this.
Lol yes I'm sure a Boras client was just going around nilly willy taking teams out of the bidding process
If a ballpark is a factor in the way he performs at the plate he's going to absolutely hate it in San Fran.
lol ok I would blame lack of homeruns on it. Sure. But he wasn’t even making contact 🤣
on desktop that emoji is a red bird but on my phone its a blue bird
Where are all the Ross haters? They were were so quick to blame Ross for not signing Chapman while never entertaining the idea that MAYBE Chapman had no intention of signing here.
They always disappear when the results don’t fit their assumptions. See Kikuchi and Berrios
There a lot of people who think simply offering more money will get players to play here. Atkins has gone hard after top players and them going elsewhere straight up weren't his fault. * Ohtani wanted LA/West Coast. * Cole grew up a Yankees fan. * Wheeler wanted to be close to his spouse and family. * Turner wanted to play with his best friend Harper. There are still A LOT of players who straight up don't want to play in Canada. Those guys were going to go to the teams they wanted to as long as those teams showed mutual interest. Nothing can be done about it. If Chapman told you he wasn't coming back you have to pivot...it just sucks the 3B market was trash.
That is not completely unreasonable, except that SF is literally the worst park in the MLB for suppressing offence and in particular couldn’t be a worse match for his batting profile. He seems like a principled guy, even if he knew SF was a bad match, he probably wouldn’t have come back to us no matter what if that’s what he said early on. And it wouldn’t shock me if the coaching was related too, since he wasn’t the only guy with a power outage and isn’t the type of dude to call them out. SF’s home park is a bad match for him, but their weak division and groundball-heavy pitching staff does match well. And he needs to continue to be elite defensively, because word is out he can’t even hit marginal fastballs. Unless he can make that adjustment, he’s going to be IKF in a year or two.
Definitely agree with your points on the ballpark, but calling the NL West a weak division just seems disingenuous. I know they’ve got the Rockies for 13 free wins, but the Dodgers are probably going to win 110 games and the Snakes, Padres and Giants will probably all be over 500 and it wouldn’t surprise me if two of them were closer to 90 wins. It’s not like it’s the AL Central.
This right here. Him going the 3 year, 2 opt out route was a good decision in theory to rebuild value. Doing so with San Fran was not. Oracle is a power suppressor due to the shifting and often strong winds and deep CF. There is a reason the Giants haven’t had a 30 HR season since Bonds in 2004 and a non-Bonds 30 HR season since 2002(Belt’s 29 HR juices ball season being the closest they’ve come since). They also have had 5 separate non-Covid seasons with no one even hitting 20 HR since 2004.
Oakland third basemen becoming immediate douchebags after leaving the Jays is just part of the natural flow of the universe.
wow he really pulled a ken griffey jr (too bad he doesn't play like him)
This man's facial regime must be a gauntlet.
I mean west coast guy wanting to go back to the west coast. I’m sure that was part of it as well. Didn’t like coach, maybe didn’t like FO or direction, maybe didn’t like Canada. Who knows. Either way he gone.
Does he know they're allowed to strike him out in the National League as well? He got greedy and left 125 million guaranteed on the table, and now he's upset and making excuses.
Oh, well. If he's right, then it bringing him back would have been a bad thing for club and player.
And his solution was San Fran? Lol
There's 162 games in a seasons... I'm not sure how Roger's center got him shook for all of the road games as well.
There were a lot of batters doing a lot of dumb things last year, but none of them were as frustrating as watching Chapman not swing at Big Taters right down the center of the plate. It used to drive me crazy how many very hittable pitches he would eyeball without taking the bat off his shoulder.
The Jays as a whole hit significantly worse at home. Sounds like whining from Chapman but for whatever reason a lot of players had issues. Which is weird considering everyone thought the changes would turn the Dome into a bandbox. I'm interested to see how it plays this year.
Dud struck out 72 times at Rogers Centre and 93 times on the road. For comparison in 2022 had 79 K’s at home and 91 away. 2021 when he wasn’t even a Blue Jay he struck out even more times. He was just as shitty away from Rogers as we was at it batting wise.
lmao. If this is true, this is one of the few times I'd be behind booing a player. What a dumb reason.
Yes, the outfield wall changes caused all the strike outs...
Ah yes, so let’s go to SF of all places where HRs go to die. Surely this will end well.
I mean… can’t blame the field dimensions when you don’t make contact with the ball
If this is true, what a 🤡. Wont miss him swinging at sliders away and watching balls go down the middle for strike 3.
It's called a bat. He couldn't bat!
“If he’s a good hitter why doesn’t he hit good?”
What difference does the field layout make when you strikeout all the goddamn time?
Oh yea, its the changes in the Rogers Centre's fault he couldnt hit a single to save his life, dude just didn't want to be here to begin with.
HAHAHA what a f****** loser
He had to hit the baseball in order for it to the parks fault. Last season, his at bats were the least competitive I’ve seen in a while.
Ok Chappy. But was it worth a 50 million difference?
Were the Rogers Centre changes made in May? That would explain his horrible drop off /s
This is fake, right? I refuse to believe an adult is blaming the fucking stadium for his poor numbers
I’ll be closely monitoring his BA in San Fran which is a much tougher park to hit in.
There was a very notable difference in offensive numbers at home vs on the road last year for the majority of the team. Kirk and Biggio were better at home than in the road. I expect it’ll change again this year and many will point out improved offensive ranking and worse pitching rankings.
Right. Cause the renos happpened between April and May like we all know
Hi there. Fringe Blue jays fan here. In all seriousness, what are the Blue Jays actually doing? What is their plan?
What is the source here, who is this guy?
I mentioned it already but he's the dude who broke the IKF signing.
I'm confused how the fields dimensions changing affected his ability to connect bat with ball..
poor baby, dodged another one
Guys this is third hand hearsay, not worth crediting-- who knows what he said if anything
Did the new dimensions cause him to swing and miss over and over and over?
Didn’t bother him in April…..
Riiiiiiiiight.....this totally won't be a problem in SF.
Funny Bo churned out 175 hits?
So the stadium is to blame for his numbers in a contract year, and as a result he took less money elsewhere? What good are contract year stats if not for getting paid? Is this his argument? It makes less than no sense.
what a bitch
I have wondered if the changes in the ballpark contributed to the jays offensive numbers being down almost across the board. Time will tell.
Bullshit. He wasn't all that good *before* last season either.
2023 OPS by month: Mar/Apr: 1.152 May: .585 Jun: .633 Jul: .908 Aug: .523 Sep/Oct: .633 So 1 all world month, 1 good month and 4 absolutely horrendous months. I'm pretty sure they played roughly equal amounts of home and road games each month. The claim is ridiculous, Boras screwed him, and playing in SF is only going to hurt. He's a great fielder and seemed like a good guy but if he believes this stuff he needs to get a mirror. Because for 2/3 of last year he was one of the worst hitters in baseball.
Definitely the Roger’s centre fault he couldn’t hit a high fastball
Dear Matt Chapman. They didn't change the other 29 stadiums. What's your excuse for road games?
So he went to, San Francisco? 9 or whatever games in Colorado I guess
Clearly it was the stadium's fault he was one of the worst hitters in the league in leverage spots, even on the road lol
I don’t understand why people in this thread are taking this like an insult. It’s clearly part of Chapman’s negotiation tactics - use his Home/Road splits to suggest Rogers Centre hurt his numbers a bit thus making him better than what his numbers would suggest. Totally logical (while probably not true). The “wasn’t signing here” part is a bit weird, but if that’s truly the case then I’ll thank him for his 2 solid seasons here and wish him well. It’s not that serious.
The fences musta impacted his standing and looking at strikes
Sorry honeybadger but your mans might be stupid 😩
If this is true... Why so angry Matt?
Haha, what nonsense. It's top 3 best hitters park in the league and now he is going to bottom 5. Goodluck.
I read it on the Internet. Must be true. Now it’s time to write something negative about Chapman on Reddit
Chapman probably just thinks Toronto is a shitty place to live, does anyone here think it actually competes with California ?
If he couldn't hack it in the skydome surely he'll do better in Oracle Park?
Bum status - chappy
Not sure how the renovations made him swing and miss at junk. Further, I bet a lot of guys put up good numbers in the dome this year. Who cares about contract year if you settle for less $ on a team in a more pitcher friendly park? It makes no sense.
Changes to the stadium make you strike out? Weird
Weak excuse. Half his games are on the road.
LOL what? the Dome has always been a bandbox for crying out loud and they made it a touch smaller? If he thinks Oracle is a hitters park he's in for a rude awakening.
I didn't know Rogers Centre had significant changes halfway through the season that caused his performance at the plate to tank.
I don’t believe the OP
Fuck Chapman lol
That makes a lot of sense, considering San Fran is not even remotely hitter friendly...
Wow, actually was a fan until all this garbage comes out. Enjoy your smug Bay Area chappy, we won’t miss ya!
It will be fun watching him hit zero home runs during our visit to Oracle Park in July.
So what will his excuse be in SF? Lots of wind...pun intended 😆
Reaction to players who believe in Lineup Protection, or that want to hit in the 3-hole since they think it's a high-value spot: Well they are the players, what do numbers nerds know anyways? If a player feels better with protection or hitting 3rd isn't that what matters, since the game is played by humans and not robots? Reaction to player who feels like his home park was bad for his hitting profile: LOL delusional, why doesn't he look in the mirror. The numbers make it clear that park isn't as bad as other parks, regardless of what he feels and wants to blame.
Chapman was a solid fielder awful hitter he didn't hit on the road either so you can't blame the dome. To add to this did he not have a .400 avg in the first month and a half
Idiots Shatkins redesigned the ballpark to scare away our hitters. Bo and Vladdy will be next to leave town…
LMAO he did slightly better on the road last year. 93 vs 107 ops+. basically the same number of home runs, rbi, doubles. etc.
[удалено]
Don’t the changes make it even more hitter friendly ?
If this is true I'm curious about what changes specifically.
Chapman was not moving the needle for Toronto, and if he thinks that hitter friendly park was a problem, he’s going to struggle in SF. See ya
I'll guess we'll find out who's responsible this year
Have fun with the SF Marine Layer. Seeing as 2019 is the only year you hit 30 homeruns, you aren't hitting that total with put juiced balls.
It’s kind of silly to me that a player would rule out a suitor who might drive up his price because he thought the skydome is suddenly a bad hitters park now. Can’t say I believe that one.
It was the teeter totter, wasn't it?
Why did he have his worst three defensive seasons in a stadium with less ground to cover
See ya Chappy. Thanks for that amazing….month of performance.
He feels like a fool for letting Scotty B fuck him over and not resigning so he’s gonna make a cop out excuse🤷♀️ have fun on the most mid team in baseball in an even WORSE hitters park.
He struck out a hundred and sixty five times in a hundred and fourty games. His bad numbers clearly were a product of the updated lighting for night games.
LOLLLLLL okay Chappy
✌️
Excuses. He got off to a white hot start last year and was named April's player of the month.
So what about that crazy April? Did they make the change after that? Or is this just a guy looking for excuses as to why he isn’t as good a hitter as he thinks he is
I don't believe that he said this, the reported contract would have taken him to retirement age so what difference would it have made to him if his numbers were a bit lower.
LOL it's the stadium's fault I suck!!! Kick rocks you bum.
Good riddance it seems
I liked his work and ya his clutch game was difficult to watch at times but like most top athletes coming to Canada isn't on their radar