{"id":533905,"date":"2026-03-20T02:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/533905\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T02:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:14:08","slug":"sf-giants-matt-chapman-hopes-hot-spring-is-sign-of-things-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/533905\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Giants’ Matt Chapman hopes hot spring is sign of things to come"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Giants<\/p>\n

Giants third baseman Matt Chapman has battered Cactus League pitching, sporting a .406 batting average in 13 games.<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle\"Giants<\/p>\n

Giants third Matt Chapman remains one of the premier defenders at his position in the majors.<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.\u00a0\u2014 Matt Chapman<\/a> is having a sizzling spring, which is great news for the San Francisco Giants<\/a>, in theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, the third baseman had an even better spring. He led the team with a .400 average, six homers and 14 RBIs. This spring, he\u2019s hitting .406 with two homers and five RBIs in four fewer games than his final 2025 Cactus League total.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels good,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it means that what I worked on this offseason is going to work in the season. The swing feels good, the defense feels good. That makes me feel like I\u2019m prepared, ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For all the focus on new second baseman Luis Arr\u00e1ez<\/a>, a three-time batting champ, plus having first baseman Rafael Devers<\/a> for a full season and shortstop Willy Adames<\/a> now accustomed to the Giants and to Oracle Park, Chapman might be the real bellwether for the offense. The team was 68-60 in his starts, 14-5 in games in which he homered and 24-12 in games in which he drove in a run \u2014 make that 59-24 overall in his two seasons with the team.<\/p>\n

Keeping him healthy, of course, is important; Chapman spent two stints on the injured list in 2025 because of a hand injury, in part the result, he told the Chronicle at the time, of the hard infield surface at Oracle Park. Ensuring that dirt has more give for the two-time Platinum Glove winner is a must.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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After his hot start last year, Chapman didn\u2019t put together his best season, in part because of the hand injuries, though he had several hot streaks. He hit .231 with 21 homers and 61 RBIs, all down from the previous year (.247, 27, 78).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The area Chapman would like to see the most improvement in is his two-strike approach \u2014 he hit .144 with two strikes, .188 when behind in the count. The league average with two strikes was .169, when pitchers were ahead, .202.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s still a work in progress, Chapman said. \u201cIt requires me to maintain all my focus,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hitting coach Hunter Mense knows Chapman well from the Blue Jays, and, he said, \u201cI\u2019ve seen Matt in a month where he was the best player in baseball, so I continue to remind him of those times and who he is and what he\u2019s been able to do. When I see him having a spring like he\u2019s having, that just helps reinforce that\u00a0\u2014 let\u2019s not question too many of these things. Because he\u2019s special. Matt\u2019s really special.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two-strike thing? Not really an issue this spring. Chapman\u2019s not hanging around and waiting much.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe hasn\u2019t gotten to two strikes a ton,\u201d Mense said. \u201cMatt\u2019s putting a lot of balls in play with less than two strikes, so when he gets the two strikes, \u00a0he knows in the back of his mind he can still put balls in \u00a0play. He has bat-to-ball skills, it\u2019s just a matter of understanding and learning how to use them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mense and Chapman go back to 2022-23 in Toronto, first-year Giants manager Tony Vitello<\/a> is learning all his players. Chapman has impressed him so much that Chapman\u2019s usually the player Vitello mentions first when he discusses leadership, likening Chapman to the captain of a college team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cEven the at-bats that are not productive on the stat sheet have been good,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cHe\u2019s put himself in a consistent position \u00a0in the box\u00a0\u2014 even times where he\u2019s broken a bat or gotten jammed or out front.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of the results, what you\u2019re looking for is consistency and he\u2019s been in a good position consistently. And he\u2019s one of those guys where emotions aren\u2019t running hot, he\u2019s not going to give an at-bat away. For a guy who plays with a high level of intensity, he\u2019s somewhat stoic in a positive way, kind of moderate with everything, which is encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giants third baseman Matt Chapman has battered Cactus League pitching, sporting a .406 batting average in 13 games.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,3260,4291,363,2329,99],"class_list":["post-533905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-giants","tag-matt-chapman","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}