One of the final major dominoes of the 2023-24 MLB offseason finally fell late Friday night, as news broke that third baseman Matt Chapman was set to sign a three-year, $54 million deal with the San Francisco Giants. (Per Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the deal — much like Cody Bellinger’s before him — includes opt-outs after each of the first two seasons, giving Chapman some meaningful financial guarantees while allowing him to dip back into free agency should he produce in 2024.)
For weeks, if not months, the Giants had been rumored as the most likely landing spot for Chapman; he’s a Bay Area native, for starters, and San Francisco entered the winter determined to get more athletic — and more adept defensively — in the infield. Now the deal is finally done, and the price certainly seems reasonable enough — it wasn’t long ago that Chapman was turning down a reported 10-year, $150 million deal from the Athletics and a separate nine-figure extension from the Blue Jays. But one question remains: How much does adding Chapman actually move the needle for a Giants team desperate to get back to the playoffs for the first time since 2021? Let’s break it down.
First thing’s first: Chapman was and remains among the best defensive third basemen in the game. Statcast had him solidly in the red when it came to Outs Above Average (its catch-all metric for defensive value) and scouts still rave about his reaction time and throwing arm. He’s about to turn 31 next month, and he doesn’t show much of any sign of slowing down with the glove.
Of course, if the rest of the profile were that rock-solid, he’d have signed a far richer deal than this. But Chapman’s defensive skills have anchored his value while his production at the plate has fluctuated. He brings tremendous power (consistently in the top 10 percent of the league in average exit velocity) and a solid walk rate, but he also has consistent issues making contact. In the aggregate, it works out to a slightly above-average bat: Over the last three years, he’s hit a combined .226/.322/.420, good for an OPS+ of 108. But it also leads to some maddening inconsistency, with scorching hot stretches followed by prolonged slumps. Just look at his 2023 season with the Jays: He was a terror in April, hitting .384 with a 1.152 OPS, but those numbers fell to .205 and .659 over the rest of the year.
Still, Chapman is a good Major League player, full stop. Certainly there are nits to pick, and he’s not the superstar the Giants have been searching for during the entire Farhan Zaidi era, but decent bat/great glove adds up to a valuable package: Chapman’s 2023 season would have been the second-best, per Baseball-Reference’s WAR metric, among San Francisco position players since Zaidi took over, and since 2021 he’s had three of the top five seasons by WAR among Giants position players. His range at third base will be invaluable as San Francisco hands the shortstop job to rookie Marco Luciano, and it’ll be a godsend to a ground ball-heavy pitching staff featuring sinkerballers Logan Webb and Jordan Hicks (plus Alex Cobb set to return at some point in the first half). Along with Jorge Soler and Jung Hoo Lee, he adds yet another professional hitter to a lineup that suddenly projects to have very few real weak points.
Giants projected lineup with Matt Chapman
1. Jung Hoo Lee, CF
2. Thairo Estrada, 2B
3. LaMonte Wade Jr., 1B
4. Jorge Soler, DH
5. Michael Conforto, RF
6. Matt Chapman, 3B
7. Mike Yastrzemski, LF
8. Patrick Bailey, C
9. Marco Luciano, SS
Will that be enough to move the needle, and get this team back to at least Wild Card contention after a dispiriting couple of seasons? The answer to that question depends in large part on what comes next, and on what signing Chapman makes possible for Zaidi over the next couple of weeks. This starting rotation still really needs some work behind Webb: Cobb will miss at least the first couple months, Robbie Ray won’t be back til the second half, fifth starter Tristan Beck is out indefinitely with an aneurysm in his pitching arm and there are serious question marks around young lefty Kyle Harrison and starter-turned-reliever-turned-starter Jordan Hicks. The team still has some financial wiggle room to land Blake Snell or (less likely) Jordan Montgomery, but could Chapman empower Zaidi to add a pitcher via trade instead?
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
Chapman creates something of an infield logjam for the Giants, who are currently projected to carry two solid veterans in J.D. Davis and Wilmer Flores on their bench. Davis, in particular, feels overqualified for that role given his intriguing offensive profile and improvements at the hot corner last year. It’s not hard to see an offense-needy team — particularly in a market this thin on position players — being willing to take him on in exchange for a back-end rotation candidate, one that would do wonders for San Francisco as Cobb, Ray and Beck get healthy. At the very least, clearing Davis’ salary would allow the team to get even more aggressive in making a run at someone like Snell, in which case Chapman would help them fill two big needs in one fell swoop.
Which, really, is the point here: Keep signing good players, regardless of neatness of fit, and things tend to work themselves out. The Giants took their sweet time, but Chapman in San Francisco has been rumored for so long because it’s always made too much sense. He’ll get to play for old manager Bob Melvin again and come back to the Bay Area, and he immediately boosts a team in need of more athleticism just about everywhere. It would have been dicey on a five-year, nine-figure deal, but on a three-year deal with player opt outs? Come on down.