SAN FRANCISCO — Matt Chapman acknowledged that it felt awkward to watch the start of Wednesday night’s game from the dugout. Before he’d been scratched from the lineup that night, he had played 97 percent of the San Francisco Giants’ innings at third base this season.
But there was important business to conduct. By the third inning, Chapman was in the trainer’s room undergoing a physical exam. Then he went for a series of MRI scans. Nothing in the results impeded his six-year, $151 million extension through the 2030 season, which the Giants announced late Wednesday night and then celebrated in a press conference Thursday morning.
Chapman was set to opt out of the two remaining years of his contract. Instead, barely two months from hitting the open market, Chapman and the Giants exercised the most enthusiastic of mutual opt-ins.
“When we signed the deal back in spring training, Matt commented, ‘You know, the goal is to have a great year and to be talking about an extension in mid-August,’” Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said. “And I think he nailed that to a tee.”
Farhan Zaidi on how, when the extension with Matt Chapman happened pic.twitter.com/M27XBqRonO
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 5, 2024
Chapman finally got the contract that some team probably should have offered him in the first place.
“This last offseason was a little strange with the free-agent market, but I was willing to bet on myself,” Chapman said. “I believed in myself and believed that the Giants would see my value as the season went on with what I bring every single day: just trying to win baseball games and be a good teammate. So I’m excited to give everything that I have for these next six seasons.”
Chapman has been durable. He has been consistent. He has played defense that is both dependable and dynamic. He’s been a paragon of professionalism. He quietly ranks among the league’s best and smartest base runners. He might not produce enough at the plate to be a solid cleanup presence on a good team, but in a Giants lineup that has operated with more than a spoiler plate or two this season, he hasn’t been a drag on the operation. He supplies steady extra-base power. Unlike some of his current and former teammates, he does not respond to RBI situations by breaking out in hives.
For all of those reasons, the Giants had the appetite to jump the claim on Chapman’s free agency and sign him to the second-richest commitment they’ve made to a player in franchise history. Only Buster Posey’s nine-year, $167 million extension was worth more.
But there was one more reason that Chapman represented a unicorn opportunity. It might be the most important reason of all. It’s the reason that made Chapman the rarest of everyday position players that the Giants have coveted.
He was willing to say yes. He wanted to stay.
“It feels like I’ve been here a lot longer than just one season,” Chapman said. “I really love my teammates. I see the talent. We have a lot of young talent mixed with some guys here that have been around. And you know, the front office is always going to go out and try to get players to make this place better every single year. So I truly believe that they’re going to do everything in their power to win. And you know, that lines up exactly with my goals.”
Chapman is excited to be a Giant long-term 👏 pic.twitter.com/QCeZKRX1uv
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 5, 2024
Have you felt exhausted by all the empty pursuits in one offseason after another? Have you felt beaten down by the failed dalliances to sign Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani? Well, the people in the Giants’ ownership suite and front office are even more exhausted. And we haven’t even gotten to the soap opera plot twist before the 2023 season when Carlos Correa’s $350 million contract fell apart at the last moment over a failed physical.
You begin to understand why it must have been so attractive for ownership to commit to Chapman. They weren’t merely wrapping up a successful free-agent pursuit. They had the opportunity to avoid the pursuit entirely.
“I recognize the timing is a little bit unusual this close to free agency,” Zaidi said. “But I think it’s a testament to our motivation and how important we feel Matt is to the future of this organization, and hopefully with Matt’s happiness with the situation here, and what we feel like we can build together.”
The word “together” might be doing a lot of work in that comment. Even after Zaidi signed a contract extension before this season, his long-term future in San Francisco is far from assured; he declined to answer a question about his status during Thursday’s press conference, saying the focus should remain on Chapman. Regardless, the Chapman extension probably doesn’t reveal anything about how ownership views Zaidi. It says more about how ownership viewed Chapman.
As for manager Bob Melvin? Well, sure, it’s probably fair to say that the Chapman signing cements Melvin’s status, given how close the third baseman and his skipper have been going back to their time together with the Oakland A’s. But that doesn’t count as any kind of great reveal. Despite their disappointing season, there was never a chance that the Giants would move on from Melvin based on one year.
The stickiest criticism of the Zaidi era isn’t that the Giants have failed to reel in a franchise-defining superstar position player. There were specific motivations for those superstars to sign elsewhere — and those motivations have very little to do with narratives like doom loops or California taxes or being potentially put off by an analytically inclined front office that operates not altogether differently from how every other front office operates these days.
No, the stickiest criticism of the Zaidi era is that, after six years, the Giants haven’t produced their own franchise-defining superstar. And even that criticism must be tempered somewhat given the emergence of left fielder Heliot Ramos and infielder Tyler Fitzgerald, who would appear to be reliable pieces in next year’s position player core. Perhaps that criticism will not abate until the Giants can develop another perennial All-Star like Posey.
For now, the Giants are still in the mode where they must fill their position player vacuums with free-agent solutions. And although Chapman might be something less than a franchise player, he’s having a superstar-adjacent season. Only Ohtani has generated more bWAR among NL West players.
In terms of stature, maybe Chapman is a little closer to Hunter Pence, who wasn’t a franchise player on those World Series teams but represented something far greater than a complementary piece: a tone-setter and daily presence who found a way to make a positive contribution every day, who served as a glue guy in the clubhouse, and who made his team better every time he was in the lineup. With Chapman, Ramos, Fitzgerald, and center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, who is expected to make a full recovery from a dislocated shoulder, the Giants at least have some bones in place for a more competitive lineup next season.
It’s not like the Giants had any attractive alternatives at third base, either. If not Chapman, the Giants would’ve had to pursue some other free-agent filler on another of those unsatisfying, short-term deals.
“Thinking back to why we were so excited to bring Matt here in the first place, I think he’s delivered all that and more,” Zaidi said. “As high esteem as we held him in based on Bob’s history with him, my history with him, he even exceeded those expectations. We just got to the point where it was hard to imagine the Giants in 2025 and beyond, without Matt Chapman at third base.”
Perhaps you’re concerned that the Giants extended themselves too far by guaranteeing Chapman a fifth and sixth year. Perhaps you’re frowning at the thought of the Giants overpaying Chapman for what he’ll produce as a 37-year-old in 2030. News flash: That’s the case for every long-term free agent. No matter how much mutual motivation there might have been to get a deal done, hometown discounts weren’t going to apply here. The Giants needed to offer market value to wrap up this transaction before free agency opened for business.
The only concern that truly applies is if Chapman’s contract prevents the Giants from pursuing other top-tier free agents. That shouldn’t be the case. Consider this: Even when you fold in Chapman’s $18 million in compensation this season, and look at the total outlay as a seven-year, $169 million package, it’s still less than half what the Giants were all set to guarantee to Correa (who by the way, hasn’t played for the Minnesota Twins since July 12 because of plantar fasciitis, and has been on the injured list three times in the past two seasons).
Chapman made it clear that he expects the Giants to keep being aggressive on the free-agent market.
“I’ve already had people reach out to me saying now that I’m here, that they want to come here,” Chapman said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a hard sell. This organization is amazing. They do everything they can for the players. We’re going to continue to build here and I think people will see that from the outside. I don’t see that ever being an issue.”
(Photo: Stan Szeto / Imagn Images / USA Today)
