Matt Chapman reveals most dispiriting part of backlash from SF Giants fans

Matt Chapman is in the midst of easily the worst season of his career, batting .232/.310/.323 (84 wRC+) with just one home run as of June 1st. Even that line is buoyed by his April production, as he managed only a putrid .186/.259/.275 line with seven RBIs for the whole month of May. After 58 games played on the year, he’s been worth 0.7 WAR thanks to some still-steady defensive contributions, although he even sports an uncharacteristically high seven errors in that department.

This isn’t the Chapman anyone envisioned when he signed a six-year, $151 million extension to stay in San Francisco. That being said, his failures on the field shouldn’t lead to people harassing him and his family. Whatever people’s expectations of the Giants are, this is all just a game, and personal attacks are completely unwarranted. Chapman discussed some of what he’s been going through with Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle before Sunday’s game.

Matt Chapman isn’t happy with how social media trolls have been attacking him

“Yeah, it’s bad,” he told Slusser, “I got off social media, stopped looking at it — but it still seems like only the negative stuff finds you, right? …You should see my DMs. It’s people saying, ‘I hope your family dies.’ People threaten us all the time, I just block it and whatever, I don’t make a big deal about it, but it’s just not cool. I would never do that to anybody.”

Threatening harm towards a baseball player because you don’t feel like they’re playing baseball well enough is well beyond the line of ridiculousness. Threatening harm towards that athlete's innocent family goes even further beyond that. Giants fans have a lot of choices if they’re frustrated with the team – they can stop going to games, not renew their season ticket packages, stop watching on TV, and so on – but no fan that would take things this far should be welcomed in the fandom.

Chapman also revealed the most disappointing thing he's heard from fans: “I think the thing that probably bummed me out the most is when people are calling for me to get pushed out of San Francisco. Over the last two seasons, I feel like I’ve been one of the best third basemen in the game… It doesn’t feel good when you feel like people are so quick to turn your back on you.”

Sadly, it’s comments like these that make it a bit harder to rally around Chapman like how Phillies fans did when Trea Turner was struggling. This situation is not like how Mets fans booed Bo Bichette barely a week into the season – it’s been two months, Chapman’s production has dipped to previously unimaginable lows, and he’s yet to take sufficient personal accountability.

Fans were not happy about Chapman’s incident with easily the Giants’ best player back on April 1st, where he yelled at Casey Schmitt to “catch the bleep-ing ball” after Schmitt couldn’t field one of his errant throws. Blame deflection has been an unfortunate characteristic of Chapman’s game, which isn’t a great quality for a supposed on-the-field leader.

Nevertheless, complaints about a player’s play are one thing, but they should stay within the realm of talking baseball. Personal attacks towards someone 99.9% of us will never know on a personal level are completely inappropriate. Social media can be a scary place, and Chapman has unfortunately had to learn that lesson the hard way. There’s always the hope that Giants fans – the genuine ones anyway – won’t sink to the level of their favorite team’s on-field production going forward.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow