Giants sign elite defender Matt Chapman on a 3-year, $54 million deal

The San Francisco Giants have acquired elite defender Matt Chapman on a three-year, $54 million contract, according to the New York Post and ESPN on Friday.

The deal includes an opt-out after the first and the second years, like the three-year, $80 million contract Cody Bellinger signed with the Chicago Cubs last week. It will enable Chapman to become a free agent and negotiate a much juicier deal when he needs to in the future.

Having made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut in 2017, Chapman is a four-time Gold Glove Award winner, including winning the fourth one in the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2023 season. He has been leading all third basemen in defensive runs saved since 2018 and came in third in outs above average.

Compared with Chapman's excellent defensive performance, his mediocre offensive work was why he wasn't chased by many teams after becoming a free agent. He blew 71 home runs in the past three seasons, but a .266 batting average (BA) with 537 strikeouts in 446 games.

Neither is Chapman a consistent hitter. He began the 2023 season with a .384 of BA in April 2023, but finished the campaign with a .240 BA, a 330 on-base percentage and a 424 slugging percentage. He obviously had trouble facing fastballs.

That's probably why the Giants were able to sign Chapman after failing multiple times to land big fish on the free agent market. The team missed the playoffs for the second straight time last season after finishing it with a 79-83 record. They only made two playoff appearances in the past nine seasons, but failed to go through the National League Divisional Series on both occasions.

The Giants fired their manager Gabe Kapler in September 2023 even before the end of the 2023 season. They signed South Korean rising star Lee Jung-hoo on a six-year, $113 million contract in December 2023.