SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Giants wanted to re-establish the memory-making business this season at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, and in a sense, they’re succeeding.
By fielding a team so stunningly ineffective you couldn’t scrub them from your mind if you wanted to.
Some stinks are tougher to wash off than others. The Giants, for as rank as this season has started, are well short of high heaven. After clinching another series defeat with a 5-1 loss to the San Diego Padres on Wednesday afternoon, they are 14-23 and in last place in the National League West. The lowest-scoring offense in the major leagues scraped together three hits against an opener, a No. 5 starter and the business end of the Padres’ bullpen. A defensive breakdown from Gold Glove third baseman Matt Chapman opened the door to San Diego’s tiebreaking, two-run rally in a strange and strategically questionable seventh inning. The eighth included another rough appearance from erstwhile closer Ryan Walker, a not-so-nice noogie for the Giants fans who were hopeful enough to stay to the end.
And when it was over, accompanied by groans plus a smattering of cheers from the Padres fans in the stands, the Giants owned the worst run differential in the major leagues. What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything? If you are a major-league team expecting to contend for the postseason, it most assuredly is not minus-42.
“Well, you know, we got off to a rough start — obviously it’s probably worse than a rough start,” said Chapman, who appended his game-changing error to a hitless streak that he extended to 24 at-bats. “Last in the major leagues, last in a lot of offensive categories. Did not see that coming. Besides a couple guys, nobody’s really gotten it going. As a collective, we really haven’t gotten it going.
“So the good news is there’s a lot of upside in this lineup. Maybe it’s going to be one of those things where we’re all cold at the same time, and we all get hot at the same time, and, you know, we’re looking at a different situation in a month here.”
Call that a hopeful thought or a desperate rationalization. Either way, apart from daydreams, the Giants don’t have much going for them right now.
They’ll be glad to avoid any thoughts about baseball Thursday. And after getting walked off twice in a doubleheader last week at Philadelphia, then traveling cross-country from Tampa, Fla., on Sunday night and immediately jumping into a homestand opener Monday, the Giants have a day to empty their brainpans before beginning the next home series Friday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“It’s probably a good time for everybody to take a timeout,” said Giants manager Tony Vitello, whose honeymoon in his first professional season is becoming as short as a Britney Spears matrimony. “Do whatever it is they do, either relax or spend time with family, and come to the ballpark with a little bit of that Little Leaguer (mentality), and enjoy playing the game, enjoy being around one another.
“And expect adversity, because it’s going to come. It’s coming in every form and fashion this year. So there’s going to be more of it.”
Losing two out of three is the perfect Arthur Murray exercise for this team. For every step forward, there have been two steps back. Their unfortunate emblem Wednesday was Jesus Rodriguez, who has provided the offensive spark the Giants hoped to receive when they promoted him, along with Bryce Eldridge, from Triple-A Sacramento on Monday. The rookie catcher was responsible for two of the Giants’ three hits Wednesday. Yet he was also playing out of position in right field to get his bat in the lineup. That proved to be an issue when he raced to the spot but couldn’t complete the catch as Ty France’s flare ticked off his glove for a two-out, two-run triple in the seventh.
“It looked catchable,” Vitello said. “He’s in the right position. Got a good jump on it. Showed no fear. Just didn’t catch it. … It would’ve been an outstanding play, but I think the play could’ve been made. … In my opinion, that’s on me, but he’s going to play for us, so there was going to have to be a day one for him at some point (in the outfield), and that was today.”
Some might question why Rodriguez, a catcher who made two starts in the outfield for Sacramento, was still playing right field in the seventh inning. It’s the wrong question to ask. You don’t make defensive replacements unless you’re playing to protect a lead, which the Giants hadn’t achieved. They’d only managed to offset Gavin Sheets’ home run in the fourth inning off right-hander Adrian Houser. Rafael Devers contributed the equalizer in the fifth when his first home run in 23 games slipped over the left-field fence.
One positive for the Giants on Wednesday: Rafael Devers hit his first home run in 23 games. (Scott Marshall / Imagn Images)
But the pitching decisions? Those continue to confound. Houser, who entered with a 7.12 ERA, was on his way to his best start as a Giant when he took the mound in the seventh inning. His first pitch to Fernando Tatis Jr. resulted in an ordinary groundball to Chapman. The play wasn’t made. Chapman had been playing a couple of steps shallow to defend against a potential bunt, and he found himself caught in between hops.
Houser had thrown a manageable 74 pitches. The Padres had three right-handed hitters lined up next. There’s an unspoken understanding among managers and starting pitchers who are in the midst of a successful outing. You don’t take out your starter when it’s still “his game.” If he’s pitching well, you give him a chance to see it through.
In every respect, it still appeared to be Houser’s game. After one pitch in the seventh, Vitello came out to take the baseball anyway.
“We just kind of started talking about, once we got to the seventh, going with our best guys there in the bullpen, and then (Ramón) Laureano to that point, had the most well-struck ball and a little bit of history as far as success, as far as (Nick) Castellanos goes, but also starting to get to the point of the game that he hadn’t been in in a while,” Vitello said. “So it’s a decision we made.”
The best guess here: the pregame script was for Keaton Winn to face that pocket of the Padres lineup. So that’s what happened. The confounding part: If that’s what the Giants planned, then why send Houser out to start the seventh? Why not instead summon Winn, a recently converted starting pitcher, when he’d be guaranteed to begin with a clean inning?
Winn, working from the stretch, issued a walk to Laureano. Castellanos advanced both runners with a groundout. Freddy Fermin hit a flyout to shallow left field. Then left-hander Matt Gage replaced Winn, and it was time for the Padres to put their rookie manager on display. Craig Stammen said he misjudged how many warmup pitches Gage was going to throw, and so he didn’t summon pinch hitter Ty France quickly enough from the cage behind the dugout. By the time France was announced, the Padres had been hit with a pitch clock violation and an automatic strike.
It all worked out for the Padres. France was able to elevate a ball to right field. Rodriguez was unable to catch it. The Padres led 3-1, and when Xander Bogaerts took Walker deep in the eighth, they led by a little more.
Whether you want to blame Vitello and his pitching coaches for their choices in the seventh, or for playing Rodriguez in right field, here’s the simplest of facts: the rally doesn’t start if Chapman catches the (redacted) ball.
“My initial read was to go get the short hop, and then I kind of backpedaled because I didn’t think I was going to get there, and I kind of just had my glove in the wrong spot,” Chapman said. “I thought it was going to bounce up, it stayed down, and then obviously gets in the outfield, and ends up costing us two runs. So unfortunately, just a bad read, and we were kind of unable to recover after that one.”
Can the Giants recover in a macro sense? After promoting Eldridge and Rodriguez, there’s no charge left in their paddles. It’ll be up to the current group, although with a more functional bench, it could be a more actively managed lineup. Regardless, no buttons they push will make a difference if their most lavishly compensated core position players don’t start producing.
“It’s a tough balance because you want to make it happen,” said Chapman, who has hit just one home run and acknowledged he came out of an early contact-hitting groove when he started searching to hit for more power. “We want to play better, we want to win. We want to take better at-bats, score more runs. But sometimes trying to do that and letting it happen are two different things. You have to have that urgency … but when you try too hard, sometimes you’re just kind of digging yourself a bigger hole.
“But the guys in this room, a lot of us have been there before. We’ve had good careers, and I think that we’re going to find our way out of this thing. Obviously, it needs to happen sooner rather than later. But I have full confidence in everybody in this room. We have a lot of talent in this room. We have a lot of good players, and we’re going to come together, and we’re going to get it figured out.”
If not, then the book about the 2026 Giants season might begin this way: In the beginning the Giants were created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Leave a Reply