It took a bit longer than everyone expected, but we finally our Bay Area reunion between Matt Chapman and the Giants, with the third baseman reportedly agreeing to a three-year, $54 million deal with San Francisco late Friday night. (Much like Cody Bellinger’s contract, it includes opt-outs after each of the first two seasons, allowing Chapman to dip back into free agency should he improve his market with a strong 2024 campaign.)
But while the calendar may already have flipped to March, bringing in Chapman isn’t the cherry on top of a busy offseason for Farhan Zaidi and Co. Chapman is a good player, one who fits the Giants’ need for more athleticism and defense in the infield (and another professional, if flawed, hitter in what was a largely punchless lineup last season). But it’s also not the cleanest fit given San Francisco’s current roster construction, and signing him creates some redundancies that Zaidi should use to address the one glaring hole still left on this roster.
Specifically: the starting rotation. The Giants swung and missed on prized free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and are now currently slated to begin the 2024 season with a group that looks … shaky, at best:
Giants projected starting rotation*
1. Logan Webb, RHP
2. Jordan Hicks, RHP
3. Kyle Harrison, LHP
4. Keaton Winn, RHP
5. Sean Hjelle, RHP
*Alex Cobb, Robbie Ray, Tristan Beck expected to start season on Injured List
Webb is as rock solid as they come, but things get dicey quick from there. Cobb is set to miss at least the first couple of months after offseason hip surgery; Ray won’t be back until the second half as he recovers from Tommy John; Beck is out indefinitely after an MRI turned up an aneurysm in his pitching arm. That leaves precious little in the way of certainty behind San Francisco’s ace: Harrison, the team’s top pitching prospect, has big stuff but iffy command and is unproven at the big-league level, while Hicks had settled into life as a setup man when the Giants signed him to give him another shot at sticking in a rotation.
It’s hard to see San Francisco making noise in the NL with that group, even assuming the best about the recoveries of their three injured pitchers. Chapman may not be taking the mound any time soon, but he does allow the Giants to address that need over the next couple of weeks — specifically by creating an infield surplus the team can trade from. San Francisco already had a starting-caliber third baseman in J.D. Davis, who made real strides in the field last year to go with his consistently above-average bat. Davis is due nearly $7 million in his final year of arbitration, but given his production to this point in his career (113 career OPS+) the Giants should have little trouble finding a team willing to take on that salary for one season — especially in a market so thin on impact position players.
Keeping Davis and Wilmer Flores on the bench all year is untenable, especially considering that the team doesn’t currently have a backup plan for rookie Marco Luciano if the top prospect proves incapable of handling the shortstop job. The next step is for Zaidi to flip Davis, either for a back-end rotation candidate (considering that the Twins landed someone like former Giant Anthony DeSclafani in the Jorge Polanco deal, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched) or simply to free up some extra payroll space to make a run at, say, Blake Snell. Scott Boras’ clients seem resigned to forgoing a huge payday this winter, with both Chapman and Bellinger taking lesser but still significant guarantees that give them flexibility moving forward.
Would Snell be willing to do the same? Could the Giants put the savings from a Davis deal toward luring him to San Francisco? Given the logjam the Chapman signing creates, it seems unlikely San Francisco makes this move unless they’re very sure that someone is eager and willing to take Davis and his full salary. Signing first, then making calls second feels like too risky a strategy at this stage of the offseason. If Zaidi has something up his sleeve however, the Chapman signing could wind up killing two birds with one stone.
