Why Matt Chapman is such a good fit for the Giants

The Giants signed Matt Chapman, a third baseman with a .226 batting average over the last three seasons, and you’re supposed to be impressed. His OPS in those seasons was .743, and his adjusted OPS was 108. For perspective, Evan Longoria’s OPS with the Giants was .750, with a 103 OPS+. J.D. Davis has a .764 OPS and a 112 OPS+ in his two years with the team. When it comes to offense, you’ve seen this program before. There will be homers and strikeouts and singles and strikeouts, but nothing that will carry or ruin a lineup.

Here’s why Chapman was a move the Giants had to make. Not all mid-.700 OPSes are created equal.

There are different ways for a .750-ish OPS to be valuable. Lou Brock is in the Hall of Fame because he stole 938 bases, not because he had a .753 career OPS. Even if you ignore his silly 2001 season, Rich Aurilia had a long, productive major-league career because he was usually good for a .700-something OPS while playing a solid defensive shortstop, which isn’t a combination that’s easy to find.

Chapman isn’t just a good defensive third baseman: He’s a historically good defensive third baseman. Here’s a list of the best defenders at third by dWAR through their age-30 seasons. There are four Hall of Famers ahead of Chapman, and there are two with a good shot to be inducted someday. He’s just ahead of Longoria on that list, and that’s a comp to keep in mind.

There were 527 pitchers last season who faced 100 batters or more. Here’s where some Giants pitchers ranked among them in ground-ball percentage:

9. Logan Webb
18. Keaton Winn
22. Jordan Hicks
27. Alex Cobb

If you limit the search to 60 innings or more last season, Webb, Hicks and Cobb had three of the 10 highest ground-ball rates in baseball last season. These are pitchers who deserve a stellar infield defense. Tyler Rogers (65th), Camilo Doval (70th) and Luke Jackson (87th) are also in the 75th percentile or above when it comes to ground-ball rate, but it’s the potential second-half rotation that makes you wonder why Chapman wasn’t signed on Nov. 4. The Giants won the staring contest with Scott Boras, but considering how well Chapman fits with a staff like this, it’s surprising that they played that game at all.

Davis had an impressive defensive season for the Giants last year, but most of his best work happened in April and May, and he regressed a little bit toward the end. He can be a strong defender again, but he’ll never be the kind of holy expletive defender that perfectly complements an ultra-ultra-groundball rotation. Pretend that Chapman is an average defensive third baseman with an .880 OPS. That would be pretty exciting, alright, and taking his defense into account, that’s kind of what he is for a grounder-drunk staff. There are a lot of ways to be a valuable baseball player, and Chapman has one of them locked down. My favorite quote from Baggs’ breakdown of Chapman is this one from Alex Cobb:

“Webby told me we got him,” Cobb said. “Then he told me how aggressive he’d be throwing in on righties this year. That was literally the first thing he said: ‘I’m going to get those groundballs to the left side.’”

Chapman is the kind of fielder who can make pitchers giddy and change their approach. He’d probably help this rotation even if he had a .680 OPS. That’s how consistently strong his defense is. But you don’t want to hear about a .680 OPS. You want dingers and offensive fireworks. There might be good news there, too.

It’s one thing for a team to have a defensive stalwart at an important position, taking their lumps when he struggles at the plate. Never forget the Neifi Chicken. But Chapman starts with a high-offense floor and gives you hope that he can return to his MVP-ish seasons early in his A’s career. For example, here are the major-league leaders in hard-hit percentage last season:

1. Aaron Judge (64.2 percent)
2. Matt Chapman (56.4)
3. Matt Olson (55.5)
4. Juan Soto (55.3)
5. Ronald Acuña Jr. (55.2)

That’s some silly company that Chapman is keeping. Of course, Joc Pederson is just outside of the top-10 on this list, so hard-hit baseballs don’t always translate to runs and general success. You have to be impressed with how hard Chapman hits the ball, though. It hints at a former ceiling that’s still possible. You see this guy? He hits the ball hard more often than anyone other than Aaron Judge.

It’s hard to pretend that Chapman is a couple of tweaks away from becoming the perennial MVP candidate that he was early in his career with the A’s, but a player who can hit the snot out of the ball is always worth dreaming on.

When you add the defense to the hard-hit balls and the general power and patience, you get a supremely valuable player. Chapman just misses the top-10 of position players in WAR since he came into the league in 2017, and here are the players ahead of him: Mookie Betts, Judge, José Ramírez, Mike Trout, Nolan Arenado, Marcus Semien, Freddie Freeman, Francisco Lindor, Paul Goldschmidt and Alex Bregman. Would you be surprised if three-quarters of that group made the Hall of Fame? You would not. Yet again, Chapman is keeping silly company.

Now pretend that Chapman was on the Giants in each of the last three seasons. Again, those are the seasons where he was posting .750-ish OPSes. Here’s where those seasonal WARs would have ranked relative to the most valuable Giants position players since Farhan Zaidi took over in 2019:

1. Brandon Crawford, 2021 (6.1 WAR)
2. Matt Chapman, 2023 (4.4)
3. (t) Matt Chapman, 2022 (3.5)
3. (t) Matt Chapman, 2021 (3.5)
3. (t) Buster Posey, 2021 (3.5)
6. Darin Ruf, 2021 (2.9)
7. (t) Mike Yastrzemski, 2020 (2.7)
7. (t) LaMonte Wade Jr., 2023 (2.7)
9. (t) Wilmer Flores, 2023 (2.6)
9. (t) Mike Yastrzemski, 2021 (2.6)

WAR is an imperfect stat, but you can certainly see that Chapman has been reliably good. Very, very good. He has been as least as good as any Giants player over the last three seasons, other than Crawford in his MVP-worthy season. The Giants have gotten a lot of little contributions from a variety of players over the last five seasons, they’ve rarely had someone who has been as reliably productive as Chapman.

And that’s the story of how the Giants made a brilliant free-agent signing with absolutely no downside.

Well, ahem, about that. It’s a great deal, and the contract is much, much more owner-friendly that The Athletic’s Tim Britton pegged him for at the start of the offseason, but it’s not without its risks. Chapman swings and misses at pitches in the strike zone a ton, which is the same issue that plagued Davis last season. It’s not that Chapman is a hacker — he actually chases fewer bad pitches than almost anyone in baseball. But he’s struck out 537 times over the last three seasons, which is more than Jim Ray Hart or Johnnie LeMaster struck out in their decade-plus Giants careers. Strikeouts aren’t inherently bad, but pair them with any age-related loss of reaction time, and a solid hitter can turn into an unplayable hitter quickly.

Chapman has had a batting average higher than .250 once … in his entire professional career. That’s including the minors. In 2018, a 25-year-old Chapman hit .278 for the A’s, but his career-high batting average in the minors was .250. He swings hard and good things happen some of the time. But there aren’t as many hits in his bat as you’d like.

It’s also worth noting that Chapman’s shiny WAR over the last three seasons is familiar. A lot of his value has to do with him staying healthy, which is absolutely a tool that teams should pay attention to. But consistently good health can be fleeting. Here’s what Chapman’s age-28 through age-30 seasons look like compared to a mystery player:

Pretty similar, no? Player X is Longoria during three seasons with the Rays. He had one more healthy season with them before he was traded to the Giants. This isn’t to use Longoria as a cautionary tale with regards to his production; he was a very good Giant when he was healthy. But he wasn’t healthy very often. He came over from the Rays as one of the best players in baseball when it came to staying on the field. Then the odometer got him. This doesn’t have to happen to Chapman, but a chunk of his value comes from his ability to stay on the field. Matt Cain was a reliable horse until he wasn’t. Longoria was an everyday player and a luxury for managers until he wasn’t. Keep this in mind.

(If you’re looking for a player who stayed healthy at the same ages that the Giants might have Chapman, Crawford is your guy. And that’s as good a comp as Longoria in several ways.)

Add it all up, and this is a chance you take. The risks are real, but the rewards are obvious. A Chapman-Nick Ahmed-Thairo Estrada infield should be extraordinarily helpful for a sinker-ball staff, and he pairs an offensive efficiency with a higher ceiling than the Giants are used to.

It doesn’t have to work, but it’s been the most obvious move since the start of the offseason for a variety of reasons. Matt Chapman is on the Giants, and it’s easy to understand why. He fits. He always has.

(Photo: John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)