The Oakland Athletics' rebuilding loss is the Toronto Blue Jays' pennant-chasing gain, as the A's traded third baseman Matt Chapman to the Jays, greatly boosting Toronto's infield defense, while also giving them an underrated power source.
Chapman possesses "otherworldly" defense, having secured a pair of AL Platinum Gloves (2018-19) and an additional Gold Glove (2021) while totaling the majors third-most Defensive Runs Saved (78) across all positions during his five-year big-league career. That's one of the things I like most about him, as elite defense breeds playing time, which is what you want from a fantasy baseball player in an offense as loaded as the one the Blue Jays have.
It's also a huge boon to a pitching staff that allowed the majors' highest percentage of batted balls hit to the left side of the field (38.1%) and "far left" as defined by our internal pitch-tracker (22.1%). Not to mention that Toronto's staff saw 44.7% of the ground balls they allowed go to the left side and 26.5% to the far left, both of those by far most in the majors.
Hyun Jin Ryu (39.3% hit to the left) and Yusei Kikuchi (39.2%) ranked high on that list, and free-agent addition Kevin Gausman (34.2%) had an above-average rate, so this is very good news for the pitching staff, to the degree that it's worth adding the extra salary-cap buck or drafting each of them a few spots sooner.
From a lineup perspective, Chapman should slide in fifth-sixth-seventh, in the Lourdes Gurriel Jr.-Randal Grichuk-Alejandro Kirk portion of the batting order, one that should present a slew of RBI opportunities. Teoscar Hernandez, Grichuk and Gurriel, after all, each saw at least 320 runners on base when they came to the plate in 2022, a healthy (albeit far from league-leading) threshold.
Chapman's main issue in recent years has been his shift to an extreme fly-ball approach, killing his batting average in the quest for 30-plus annual homers, but at least getting out of the Oakland Coliseum and into Toronto's Rogers Center fits that style better. Rogers Centre had an above-average HR factor in 2018, 2019 and 2021 (remember, it wasn't in use in 2020), which is why I'm more bullish on Chapman in Toronto than I had been in Oakland. He was my No. 15 points-league third baseman before the deal, but is now a more attractive selection than Ke'Bryan Hayes and Jeimer Candelario (whom I had ahead of him). Plus, there's a good chance Chapman could also leapfrog No. 12 Luis Arraez if the Minnesota Twins make additional moves.
The Athletics' haul is headlined by 2021 first-round draft pick and starting pitching prospect Gunner Hoglund, who is still recovering from Tommy John surgery but has front-to-mid-rotation upside. It's the other three prospects -- starting pitcher Zach Logue and reliever Kirby Snead and third baseman Kevin Smith -- who could make fantasy contributions in the near future.
Smith, who batted .285/.370/.561 with 21 home runs and 18 stolen bases in 94 games in Triple-A before struggling mightily in a late-season "cup of coffee" for the Blue Jays, has a clean path to regular at-bats in Chapman's place in Oakland. He'll surely get a long look for the job, and has enough roto category-filling potential to be an AL-only sleeper.
Logue, who has great control and an above-average changeup (and had a strong stint in Triple-A last year), might be a high-floor rotation candidate for the A's before midseason, also putting him on the AL-only radar. Snead has more of a situational reliever look to him, but Oakland's is a bullpen without any clear distribution of roles, so it's possible he could move into the holds mix (and perhaps into the save conversation in the best-case scenario) at some point during the year.