Chapman joins exclusive Giants club with final big game originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
PHOENIX — If ever there was a man who deserved to watch a fly ball for a few seconds, it was Matt Chapman in the third inning.
The Giants were officially eliminated from the MLB playoff race last week, despite Chapman’s best efforts. He’s played in 149 of 157 games, missing only time with a minor hamstring injury, the birth of his daughter, and the need to pass a medical before he could extend his six-year contract. His first child is less than a week old, and the trip from Kansas City to Phoenix on Sunday night reunited father and daughter, which was exciting but probably pretty exhausting.
When Chapman hit an Eduardo Rodriguez fastball to left-center, he could have assumed it was a home run. That would have happened in 26 other parks.
But the ball hit the wall and bounced away from center fielder Jake McCarthy, and because Chapman never stopped to look, he was ready when Giants third-base coach Matt Williams waved him home. He slid in for the throw for an inside-the-parker that capped a 6-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, their sixth in seven games on the road trip.
The Giants won’t get anywhere even if they win their last five, but they’ll be hoping that energetic finish carries into next year. At least they know they’ll be behind a third baseman who sets the tone every day. Manager Bob Melvin wasn’t at all surprised to see Chapman racing around second base so hard that it was an easy decision for Williams.
“He doesn’t know any other way, but it’s just showing everybody how we expect to play going forward,” Melvin said. “That’s what he’s always meant to me. Even in Oakland, as a rookie and his whole time there — that’s just what comes with him, and that’s why everybody loves watching him play. He’s got one pace, it’s the only pace he knows. It’s all out there, all the time.”
It’s more pace than you might expect from a 31-year-old infielder. Chapman ranks in the 85th percentile in sprint speed, the kind of athleticism that made it easier for the Giants to commit to him for the rest of the decade. He later added a triple, becoming the first Giant since Monte Irvin in 1953 to triple and hit an inside-the-park home run in the same game.
Irvin was doing it at the Polo Grounds, so he had a little more room to work with, but Chapman knew Chase Field would give him plenty of running room as he watched the ball hit the wall and bounce back to right field. On NBC Sports Bay Area’s “Giants Postgame Live,” he called the 360-foot trip “exhausting” but “a lot of fun.”
“He’s big up there in the middle, so I didn’t think I had it all. It was an inside fastball and I was just trying to get the barrel to it,” Chapman explained. “When I saw him miss that ball, I turned it on and I was really hoping Matty would swing at me and I went and dug it. That was a lot of fun and it was nice to get those two runs there and get the guys fired up.”
The homer, his 27th of the 2024 MLB season, gave the Giants the lead. They would get two more — one from Casey Schmitt and one from Michael Conforto — on another night of line drives, clean defense and solid pitching. The win was their sixth in seven games on the road trip and gave them a real chance to finish the season at .500.
The Giants have been on a roll since the pressure to stay alive was lifted. Next season, they’ll be counting on Chapman to make sure they don’t get back in that situation. Because as promising as the past week was, it’s also an unfortunate reminder of what this season could have been.
Chapman was part of a star class of free agents that was supposed to lead the organization back to the playoffs. Instead, the Giants are playing the spoilsport, but they’re pretty good at it, and they’re hoping their young players don’t forget what this winning streak felt like.
There was a different mood in the clubhouse for Monday’s game. Even the always serious Williams had a smile on his face as he traded jokes with young players before batting practice. Chapman made sure he was smiling in the third inning, too, though Williams probably couldn’t have done anything to slow him down. Chapman planned to go for four no matter what.
“I think I would have, with the momentum I had,” he said. “I wanted it.”
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