SARASOTA, Fla. — Asked to describe his whirlwind past few days and the trade that landed him in Toronto Blue Jays camp, Matt Chapman scanned his new surroundings at the club’s player development complex in Dunedin.
“Is today Friday?” the new Jays third baseman asked honestly. “I think I found out Wednesday. It happened in a flash.”
That’s how most around baseball feel these days, as a hectic week post-lockout has produced blockbuster trades, signings, and, oh yeah, baseball games started Friday, too. The Jays were busy packing the bus for a trip to Sarasota to face the Baltimore Orioles in the Grapefruit League opener as Chapman was talking to the media.
A lot has been happening and the Jays have been right in the thick of it all.
While the driving force behind the Chapman trade was his all-world glove and filling a gaping hole at third base, there are questions surrounding what kind of impact he can have with the bat.
Questions that Chapman is eager to start answering another year removed from September 2020 hip surgery.
“Last year was a tough year for me,” Chapman said. “Coming off that hip surgery in 2020, I just wasn’t quite as strong as I wanted to be. And there’s never enough time to get ready for a season when you’re rehabbing like that after a shortened off-season with my hip.
“I learned a lot from last season and learned what will make me successful and what adjustments I needed to make. I got strong again, first things first. I learned how to get into using my back hip and stay behind the baseball again. I feel a lot like I did in 2018 and 2019, physically healthy.”
That should be music to the Jays’ front office’s ears, and something that must be factored in to
his down numbers over the past two seasons.
Chapman had his best years in 2018 and 2019, hitting 36 home runs in 2019, but more importantly producing the lowest strikeout rate of his career at 21.9 per cent.
It’s been well over 30 per cent the past two years, sapping some of the value Chapman brings to the table.
There’s an obvious combo of power and patience with Chapman, but it’s been a couple of years since he’s been a true impact player with the bat.
Playing at less than 100 per cent could be the reason for that.
“I think this year you’re going to see a more athletic, well-rounded version of myself,” Chapman said.
In this lineup, Chapman won’t be relied upon in the heart of the order like he was in Oakland, and he realizes that.
“I think it’s such a deep lineup that’s capable of wearing down starting pitching and able to get into the bullpen and take long at-bats and if one guy doesn’t get the job done the next guy can come to the plate and take a good at-bat,” Chapman said. “It seems like a lineup that there’s not too much pressure on one specific guy because it’s a deep lineup and everybody just kind of does their part.”
But Chapman isn’t trying to be a role player, either.
If his bat rebounds to previous levels, he could end up being a vital part of one of the best offences in baseball.
“I still think that just because I’m maybe not hitting third or fourth doesn’t mean I don’t think I’m capable of doing that,” Chapman said. “But it is nice to know not all the pressure is on me or (Matt) Olson or somebody like that.
“We have such a deep lineup; I can just jump in and do my part.”
Chapman got to work right away Friday and will likely make his Blue Jays exhibition debut over the next few days as manager Charlie Montoyo works his veterans into the lineup with a shortened spring schedule.
Marcus Semien, a former teammate in Oakland, already gave Chapman a bit of a heads up on what to expect.
“He just told me that I’m going to love it and I’m going to love the guys and I can tell that he’s already right,” Chapman said.
His relationship with Bo Bichette on the left side of the infield is a work in progress, but there’s no doubting Chapman’s presence is a plus for the young shortstop.
“For me, I want to get to know Bo and what his strengths are defensively and where he likes to play,” Chapman said. “Being able to cover a lot of ground over there at third, I just want to help him out and hopefully he doesn’t have to take too many backhand plays.”
Even as Jays fans are dreaming of Jose Ramirez at second base, an infield of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Chapman, Bichette and either Santiago Espinal or Cavan Biggio is pretty star-studded.
“I think this infield is amazing,” Chapman said. “We have so many talented players offensively and defensively, but I’ll leave the best-in-baseball to you guys. I think it’s worth putting us in that conversation and once we get to play with each other and get to know each other a little bit better, who knows what’s possible.”
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
