Oakland Athletics will learn a lot about Chapman in 2016
With his impressive Spring Training performance, the Athletics will be anxious to see what Matt Chapman’s second full season will reveal about the third base prospect.
The Oakland Athletics’ Matt Chapman has had an impressive spring. He’s hit four home runs, second most on the team, and is slugging .700. He walked in his only plate appearance Wednesday night. He’s also made several great defensive plays to back up his widely praised glove skills and strong arm.
While his spring showing has been impressive, Chapman’s offensive potential is hazy. Scouting reports suggest 20 home runs per season in the majors are a legitimate possibility. But with only 572 professional plate appearances, any forecast of his offensive ceiling would be premature, especially considering most of those appearances came in the California League, which inflates offensive production.
FanGraphs’ Dan Farnsworth said it best: “Whichever way his development takes him, getting out of the California League will be the best indicator of his future ability to hit.”
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Assuming good health, the Athletics are going to learn a lot about Chapman in 2016.
Chapman is showing an impressive amount of power this spring for someone who only hit six home runs his last year at Cal State Fullerton. The Athletics drafted him in the first round of the 2014 draft and he spent most of the rest of the season at Class A Beloit in the Midwest League. Chapman struggled in 50 games there, hitting .237 with a .282 on base percentage but hit five home runs.
Chapman’s 2015 season is where it gets interesting. He started the season on the Disabled List with a knee injury and didn’t play his first game until May 7. He would also miss a month at the end of the season for a wrist injury. During the time he was healthy, there are two distinct periods: before and after June 18. Here are his splits from May 7 through June 18 (38 games, 171 PA) compared to June 19 to August 2 (39 games, 169 PA):
5/7-6/18: .243 AVG/ .333 OBP/ .507 SLG/ 8 HR/ .277 BABIP/ 10.5 BB%/ 24.0 K%
6/19-8/2: .276 AVG/ .373 OBP/ .669 SLG/ 15 HR/ .263 BABIP/ 12.4 BB%/ 21.3 K%
June 18 is a clear line of demarcation for Chapman’s season. He was hitless in his three previous games and hadn’t homered since June 6. Starting on the 19th, he homered in three straight games and in six of his next 11.
Again, incredibly small sample size, but the numbers after the 19th raise the question of where the sudden surge in power originated. Chapman almost doubled his home run output after June 18 and slugged more than 100 points higher. The obvious explanation is that he simple took advantage of the Cal League’s friendly confines. A more exciting narrative is he switched his focus to driving pitches, which is a similar approach Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy had last season with the Mets.
Murphy doesn’t strike out nearly as much as Chapman does—Murphy whiffed in 13.0 percent of plate appearances from 2008-14 while Chapman has struck out in 22.0 percent of his plate appearances—but Chapman experienced a similar drop in K% during the second half of the season that Murphy experienced in 2015. Chapman also experienced a drop in batting average on balls in play from .277 to .263. (Murphy’s went from .321 from ‘08-14 to .278 in 2015).
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The early indications from this spring lend some credibility to Chapman’s power display during the dog days of last summer. The Athletics will most likely send Chapman to Double-A Midland in the Texas League, where he will look to build on his success during the second half of 2015.