SAN FRANCISCO – Matt Chapman was taken out of the lineup about an hour before first pitch on Wednesday. Curiously, the Giants gave no reason for the move. Immediately after the game, manager Bob Melvin said his third baseman was not injured.

“He’s doing well,” Melvin said of his most durable player. “It was time to give him one.”

The Giants give Chapman a lot more.

A few minutes after the clubhouse closed, the Giants announced that Chapman had agreed to terms of a six years, $151 million contract extension, a deal that will keep him from opting out in the offseason and likely keep him in San Francisco for the rest of his career.

The 31-year-old is a client of Scott Boras, and Boras almost always prefers his stars to hit the open market. But Chapman was a special case. Boras has so many big-name clients this winter – most notably Juan Soto – that Chapman might have had to wait for the dust to settle again. He wouldn’t even necessarily have been the most sought-after third baseman on the market; Alex Bregman, another Boras client, is also set to become a free agent.

There were many reasons for Chapman to take action, including this one: He loves playing in San Francisco and feels rejuvenated here. The Giants feel the same way about the player who has been their leader this season, putting up numbers more in line with his days as a star across the Bay Bridge.

Chapman has 22 home runs and a .778 OPS, and looks like he’s almost certain to take home his fifth Gold Glove Award. He began the day ranked 13th in the major leagues in fWAR and is far and away the leader among all NL third basemen. He’s also been posting every day, as Wednesday’s rare break was only his fourth of the season.

The Giants are betting Chapman can keep that performance up, and at least his glove is a tool that should keep him valuable even if other areas of his game decline. They’re betting big, too.

Chapman returned to the Bay Area in part because he found the market unexpectedly cool last winter. The Giants signed him on a modest three-year, $54 million contract, pleasing their manager, who made no secret of his desire to reunite.

The Giants will nearly triple that deal to secure Chapman’s services through 2030, pairing him with Jung Hoo Lee, the only other player to receive a six-year contract under Farhan Zaidi. The president of baseball operations will attend a press conference with Chapman and Boras on Thursday morning, and perhaps that will provide some indication of where ownership is leaning.

Chapman watched the Giants fall to four games under .500 on Wednesday, and considering how difficult the rest of the schedule is, there’s a real chance they end up somewhere in the mid-70s in the win column. They’re already behind three other teams in their division by double digits, and there will likely be plenty of rumors about Zaidi’s job status over the next few weeks. But the owners followed suit with arguably one of the biggest decisions of his tenure, awarding the second-largest contract in franchise history, trailing only Buster Posey’s contract extension.

Zaidi made sure the Giants struck this time before the postseason began. There will be time for Soto rumors and Blake Snell exit drama later, but for now, the Giants have brought back one of their most important players. After losing Posey and the Brandons, they have ensured the batting lineup has a leader for years to come.

Chapman is under contract until 2030 and will earn $25 million each of the next six seasons, with a $1 million signing bonus in 2025. Maybe that was the “bonus” his lucky manager was talking about.

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