After A LONG Offseason, Matt Chapman And Scott Boras Settle For Pennies On The Dollar With The San Francisco Giants
This is a three-year deal. I don’t know why Jon Heyman worded it so bizarrely, but Matt Chapman has signed for three years, $54 million with the San Francisco Giants. Chapman was the last remaining position player in free agency that anyone really cared about. Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery are now the last available premier players on the market.
Looking at this on paper, I think that it’s a rock-solid deal for the Giants. There was a lot of hesitancy to sign Chapman this offseason because he struggled with the bat in the last four months of 2023. You never really know what offensive version of Chapman you will get. There were a few years there in Oakland in which he was an MVP-caliber talent, putting up solid power numbers and also being the best defensive third baseman in the American League. The bat has fallen off a bit, but I think some teams were slightly shy regarding potentially bringing Chapman on. The three-year deal makes total sense, and even if the bat falls off, which I suspect might happen in a spacious park in San Francisco, he’s still going to provide Gold Glove, caliber defense for the Giants at the hot corner.
The story here for me isn’t so much Chapman or the Giants. It’s the fact that Scott Boras has not had the best off-season. There isn’t a more player-friendly agent in sports, and typically, he comes out like a bandit, somehow getting his clients the best deal possible. I think this is an instance in which he expected some team to be the sucker for Chapman, and nobody really ponied up. Nobody will turn down making 18 million a year, but I don’t think waiting until the last second was the right move in this particular instance.
The Giants have quietly put together something of an interesting off-season. They fired Gabe Kapler and replaced him with Bob Melvin. I know that Kapler won manager of the year, but if you ask me, that is an immediate upgrade. They signed Jorge Soler, and now they have Matt Chapman to add at third base. After that 107-win season in 2021, they’ve been competitive, but they’ve been consistently on the outside looking in in that division. Adding Soler and Chapman by no means makes them the favorite in that division, especially with the Dodgers having the offseason that they just had, but I could see them fighting for a wild cart spot.