Five fun facts about SF Giants free-agent acquisition Matt Chapman

The SF Giants have brought third baseman Matt Chapman back to the Bay Area. JD Salazar highlights some fun facts about the former A's and Blue Jays star.

The waiting game is finally over. The SF Giants have agreed to a deal to secure Matt Chapman as their starting third baseman for the 2024 season. Amidst an offseason whose "floodgates" have amounted to a mildly leaky faucet, Chapman's All-MLB glove gives a Giants team parched for talent a bit more to drink.

As a long-time player under manager Bob Melvin and the face of a new effort to ride with everyday players, Chapman is someone that Giants fans will soon become very familiar with. But just who is Chapman as a person and player, and how will he mesh with an unsettled lineup and fanbase? To give you more on the man behind the baseball card, here are 5 fun facts about 3B Matt Chapman.

5 fun facts about SF Giants 3B Matt Chapman:
1. DJ BC Raw to DJ MC Happy?

Brandon Crawford in his "DJ BC Raw" Players' Weekend alternate uniform (2018)

Every clubhouse needs music. Much of the time, a player or two naturally rises to the role of unofficial clubhouse DJ. For years, that role in San Francisco has been filled by legendary shortstop Brandon Crawford, who parlayed his "B-Craw" nickname into the legendary "DJ BC Raw" moniker.

With Crawford's departure, it's up to another widely-respected infielder in Matt Chapman to fill his shoes. Kaitlyn McGrath provided an insight into Chapman's musical presence in this story about a grounded team flight, when Chapman filled the time with an impromptu, team-wide karaoke session. His mother Lisa and sister Haley are both singers, so perhaps it's no surprise that Matt Chapman feels so comfortable grooving with his teammates.

“We could have totally all just been super pissed off,” Chapman said of the travel mishap. Instead, the Blue Jays ended up having a blast. It was no surprise that Chapman was at the center of it all.
   
      "He knows how to lighten up the mood, [Blue Jays outfielder Daulton] Varsho said,
      "and have a good time."

Perhaps one day soon, we'll be hearing stories of performances from "DJ MC Happy".

5 fun facts about SF Giants 3B Matt Chapman:
2. A California Native

Chapman's a West Coast guy through and through, his life path tracing the contours of the Golden State. Chapman grew up in Lake Forest, where he played for El Toro High, and attended Cal State Fullerton, just a few miles away. As a junior at Fullerton, Chapman won first-team All-Big West honors and third-team Baseball American and Louisville Slugger All-American honors. When the Oakland A's selected Chapman in the first round of the 2014 MLB Draft, it marked the first of nine years he would spend with the Bay Area organization.

After a two-year stint with the Toronto Blue Jays, Chapman once again finds himself a California resident with the San Francisco Giants. As a long-time Athletic, Chapman should have little trouble re-acquainting himself to the region.

5 fun facts about SF Giants 3B Matt Chapman:
3. Unlucky in Wild Card games

For Matt Chapman, the glory of the postseason has come with its fair share of bitterness. Chapman has made the postseason four times (twice as an Athletic, twice as a Blue Jay), each time as a Wild Card team. In all four of those series, Chapman's team ended up being swept. Chapman batted in all six games (losing 0-2 in 2022 and 2023's best-of-3 Wild Card format), going 6-22 (.273 batting average) with four walks, five strikeouts, and one double.

Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Matt Chapman (26) reacts after striking out (2022) / Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

The most painful game came against the Mariners in 2022. Facing elimination in the Wild Card series, Chapman's Blue Jays entered the sixth inning with an 8-1 lead over the visiting Seattle Mariners. Chapman went 1-3 with a walk and an RBI, but it wasn't enough to prevent Seattle from scoring nine runs in the final four innings, handing Toronto a devastating 10-9 loss and knocking them from the playoffs.

Zaidi's Giants haven't had much better luck in the playoffs, and with the rival Dodgers looking to be a 100+ win team yet again, Chapman and the Giants will have to surmount their fair share of painful recent history to make some noise in the postseason.

5 fun facts about SF Giants 3B Matt Chapman:
4. The Hardest Hitter in the Majors?

When you think of hitters who can absolutely clobber a baseball, you think of a few names: Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, maybe a Ronald Acuña Jr. or Pete Alonso. But what if I told you that none of those players were as consistently powerful as Matt Chapman?

Matt Chapman led the MLB in hard-hit rate in 2023, per Statcast

"Hard-hit balls," when the batter hits the ball at least 95 MPH off their bat, are the hallmark of some of the game's best hitters. Last year, Chapman them all, from Juan Soto to Shohei Ohtani. Though Chapman's overall production didn't nearly match the rest of the group, he has an elite and consistent ability to drive the ball hard, ranking in the top 5% of baseball in four of the past five years.

There's one small caveat here - if you reduce the minimum plate appearances to 450, Aaron Judge easily takes the lead, with a monstrous 64.2 hard-hit%. This is to say that while Chapman can absolutely drive pitches, he's not a shoo-in to be the first Giants' hitter to mash 30 home runs since Bonds did 20 years ago. 

But even then, Chapman's consistency shows up in the fact that he made the list as a qualified player (>502 AB), and Judge didn't. Chapman's combination of hard contact and durability last year truly went unmatched. In fact, you have to lower the plate appearance threshold to just 100 (Ji-Man Choi, 59.2 hard-hit% on 117 PA) to find anyone else who could challenge Chapman's numbers. If Chapman can bring that kind of production to San Francisco this year, Giants fans will be thrilled to watch it.

5 fun facts about SF Giants 3B Matt Chapman:
5. Matt Chapman, Player Representative

Austin Slater, a do-everything platoon outfielder for the Giants, is one of the eight members of the MLB Players Association Executive Subcommittee. Slater is one of the four players representing the Pension Committee, dedicated to ensuring the livelihood of professional baseball players after their (often very short) careers are over.

Perhaps he'll make fast friends with Matt Chapman, who served as an A's player representative in 2021. While news about Chapman's involvement with the MLBPA has been very infrequently reported on (perhaps due Oakland's ownership being on more terse relations with the MLBPA than other organizations), San Francisco's notably labor-oriented culture should be a great match for Chapman.

Chapman's Twitter-I-mean-X account reflects this, with more than a few reposts in support of the players' union. Even as recently as last year, when Chapman played in Toronto, he shared in support for the SF Chronicle's Susan Slusser, who wrote:

Always wonder why some fans would prefer to see billionaires pocket revenues rather than spend it on the folks that the fans are actually going to see play. I don’t care if *you* would play for a song. This is a business. And the career is a short one. Pay the ones on the field.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) January 13, 2022

Hopefully, he'll have a chance to continue to raise his voice in support of financial equity throughout organized baseball with the SF Giants, for a team that's willing to foot the bill required to engineer a consistently dominant team.