Giants' Matt Chapman expected to undergo season-ending surgery

San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Chapman has a hernia and a core muscle tear. He is going to see a specialist on Sunday and expects to have season-ending surgery next week. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle and Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area passed along the info.

Manager Tony Vitello said earlier in the week that surgery was under consideration. Chapman has been sidelined since the beginning of July with what the team initially called an abdominal strain. Five weeks later, the muscle tear and hernia provide more specificity. Pavlovic writes that Chapman has played through the hernia for the majority of the season.

The Giants will hope that the procedure helps rejuvenate Chapman’s bat in 2027. He hit .235/.324/.368 with a career-low seven home runs over 352 plate appearances. Chapman had seemingly been on the upswing with a strong June in which he hit six of those longballs and had an .838 OPS. That got his season numbers up to roughly league average after an awful first couple of months, but it remains the least productive offensive season of his 10-year big league career.

The injury didn’t seem to have any impact defensively. Chapman leads third basemen with 16 Defensive Runs Saved and is tied for third at the position (behind Joey Ortiz and Alex Bregman) in Outs Above Average. It’s unlikely he’ll win a sixth Gold Glove for a season that’ll end with a little over 700 innings but he was certainly performing at that level before the injury.

Chapman is signed for $25MM annually for another four years, his age 34-37 seasons. San Francisco would surely love to shed any of their three huge underwater contracts (Chapman, Willy Adames and Rafael Devers). They were unable to find a taker for any of those at the deadline and seem unlikely to be able to move them in the winter.

Chapman’s deal seemed like it might be the least onerous when he was hitting in June, but he wouldn’t come close to nine figures if he were a free agent coming off a season-ending surgery. The deal seems at least $50M-$60M above market value, making a trade next offseason very difficult to envision. That’s before considering the California native’s full no-trade clause. The hope is that he’ll be 100% and starting at third base for the Giants on Opening Day.

Casey Schmitt settled in as the everyday third baseman in July. He’s also probably done for the year after suffering a meniscus tear in his left knee that required surgery. It’s now mostly on Christian Koss with some work from Osleivis Basabe and Buddy Kennedy. Basabe is playing regularly at second base but could get more third base work once deadline acquisition Marcelo Mayer returns from a stress reaction in his left arm.