With his 2026 MLB season officially over, Giants star Matt Chapman now has his sights set on regaining full health and returning to action in 2027.Due to some core muscle discomfort he started experiencing back in mid-April, Chapman went on the IL on July 1. The third baseman was nearing a return ahead of the 2026 MLB trade deadline, but Chapman’s symptoms remained, which led to his season-ending surgery on August 11.
NBC Sports Bay Area spoke to Marc Safran, M.D., the professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford Medicine, who detailed the potential reasoning behind Chapman and San Francisco opting in for the season-ending operation.
“I think the issue is that this is an injury where the abdominal muscles attached to the pelvis, and sometimes the adductor or the inner thigh muscles attached to the pelvis, you think of it as kind of a strain. Oftentimes it’s not necessarily an acute tear where the muscle will retract, and it’s more of a microscopic damage. So, you hope that it will heal and, with rehab, be able to get back. Some people can and some people cannot,” Safran stated.
“A lot of patients do get better...