6 Blue Jays who could be playing their way out of the team’s 2024 plans

Matt Chapman

At the beginning of the season, one probably would have expected to see Matt Chapman fall under this category for obvious reasons. As one would recall, Chapman had a blistering month of April in which he was given both AL Player of the Week and AL Player of the Month honours, as he batted .384 with a 1.152 OPS, 17 runs scored, 15 doubles, five home runs, 21 RBI, 14 walks and 26 strikeouts. At that time, many had thought at the productive rate in which he was going, Chapman was definitely going to price himself out of the town by the end of the season.

However, since his hot start, Chapman has cooled off considerably for the rest of the season, as in the following four months, he has underperformed quite a bit, perhaps even slightly below his usual standards. In 89 games since April, he has posted a .216 batting average, .687 OPS, 43 runs scored, 20 doubles, 10 home runs, 28 RBI, 41 walks and 108 strikeouts. More importantly, he has been unable to produce the big clutch hit in key moments that he was constantly doing during his first month of the season.

With the severe lack of quality third baseman available in the upcoming free agent market at the end of the season, it is still expected that Chapman will be landing a huge multi-year, nine-digit salary contract. But if his current lack of consistent production shown for pretty much of the season is what he truly is, despite providing Gold Glove-calibre quality defence, he may not be worth the dollar amount projected to be for his expected contract. As a result, the Jays should keep their options open as for one reason or another, Chapman may not return beyond this season.