Chapman joins the exclusive Giants club with his last big game Originally appeared in NBC Bay Area Sports
PHOENIX — If anyone ever earned the right to watch a deep ball fly for a few seconds, it was Matt Chapman in the third inning.
He The Giants were officially eliminated Last week, Chapman was ruled out of the MLB playoff race despite Chapman’s best efforts. He has played in 149 of 157 games, missing time only because of a mild hamstring strain, the birth of his daughter and the need to get a physical before writing his first book. a six-year contract extensionTheir first child is not even a week old, and the trip from Kansas City to Phoenix on Sunday night reunited father and daughter, which was great, but also probably pretty exhausting.
When Chapman hit an Eduardo Rodriguez fastball into left-center field, you might have assumed it was a home run. It would have been in 26 other parks.
But the ball hit the wall and bounced away from center fielder Jake McCarthy, and since Chapman never stopped to look, he was ready when Giants third base coach Matt Williams motioned for him to come home. He slid in before the pitch. For a user inside the parking lot That was the highlight of a 6-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the sixth in seven games on this trip.
The Giants aren’t going anywhere even if they win their final five games, but they’re hopeful that this strong finish can continue into next year. At the very least, they know they’ll be lining up behind a third baseman who sets the tone every day. Manager Bob Melvin wasn’t at all surprised to see Chapman running so fast at second base that it was an easy decision for Williams.
“He doesn’t know any other way to play, but he’s just showing everybody how we expect to play in the future,” Melvin said. “That’s what he’s always meant to me. In Oakland, too, as a rookie and the whole time he was there, that’s what sticks with him and that’s why everybody loves to watch him play. He’s got a rhythm, it’s the only rhythm he knows. It’s all he can do, all the time.”
It’s more pace than one 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 this decade. He later added a triple, becoming the first Giant since Monte Irvin in 1953 to have a triple and an inside-the-park homer in the same game.
Irvin did it at the Polo Grounds, so he had a little more room to work with, but Chapman knew Chase Field could give him plenty of room to run as he watched the ball crash off the wall and bounce toward right field. On NBC Sports Bay Area’s “Giants Postgame Live,” he said the 360-foot trip was “tiring” but “a lot of fun.”
“There’s a lot of room for center, so at first I thought I didn’t get it. It was an inside fastball and I just tried to get to it,” Chapman explained. “Once I saw I didn’t get it, I just went to play and I was really hoping Matty would wave me down and I was digging in. It was a lot of fun and obviously it was good to get those two runs right there and get the guys going.”
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 filled with line drives, clean defense and solid pitching. The win was their sixth in seven games on this road trip and gave them a real chance to finish the season with a .500 record.
The Giants have taken off since the pressure of trying to stay alive was taken off of them. Next season, they’ll be counting on Chapman to make sure they don’t find themselves in this situation again. As promising as this past week has been, it’s also an unfortunate reminder of what this season could have been.
Chapman was part of a star-studded free agent class that was supposed to lead the organization back to the playoffs. Instead, the Giants are playing the role of spoilsport, but they’re pretty good at it and are hopeful their young players don’t forget what it feels like to be on this winning streak.
The mood in the locker room before Monday’s game was different. Even the ever-serious Williams had a smile on his face as he traded jokes with the young players before batting practice. Chapman made sure to smile in the third inning, too, though Williams probably couldn’t have done anything to stop him. Chapman had intended to try to score four runs anyway.
“I think I would have done it, with the drive I had,” he said. “I wanted it.”
