SF Giants News: Chapman's bad karma, another odd first baseman, rotation a mess

Things are going the wrong direction for the SF Giants right now. It looked like maybe they had found something on Thursday night with a feel-good 7-2 victory over the New York Mets but the last two games have been a real disappointment. Let’s take a look at some news pieces around the team you may have missed.

SF Giants news bits as team heads in the wrong direction

Chapman’s bad karma

In San Francisco’s last series against the San Diego Padres, Giants third baseman Matt Chapman made a lot of headlines with his very public and easy to lip-read admonishment of first baseman Casey Schmitt after he missed two throws from Chapman that he probably should have caught.

Well, maybe karma caught up with Chapman as he made a very uncharacteristic error on Saturday night. On a slow ground ball to his left, he bobbled the ball and then made a throw that was a little off line that Jerar Encarnacion was, unsurprisingly, not able to handle at first base.

People were very quick to turn Chapman’s words to Schmitt against him. That’s now three errors on the season for Chapman even though two of those probably shouldn’t have been charged to him. Still, if he’s going to hold others accountable when they mess up he is going to catch flak when he makes a mistake. Maybe it was a case of the baseball gods giving Chapman his comeuppance for chewing out a teammate.

Another odd first baseman

The fact that Schmitt and Encarnacion are having to play first base is already less than ideal. Manager Tony Vitello said that Rafael Devers should be good enough to play in the field at first base during the team's next road trip per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle, but with Schmitt currently dealing with back tightness that has kept him out the last few games, that means another unlikely candidate could see some reps at first base.

Christian Koss, an infielder who usually plays second base, shortstop, and third base has reportedly been practicing at first base recently per Justice delos Santos of the Mercury News. Koss may be the backup to Encarnacion right now which shows just how bad things have gotten at the position. 

Rotation is rough

There were concerns about the team’s starting rotation coming into the season and those fears seem to be warranted. Tyler Mahle got roughed up on Friday night and Landen Roupp got roughed up on Saturday night.

With how bad the offense has looked at times, the Giants are probably going to need a strong starting staff if they’re going to have any chance at competing this season. Thus far, it doesn’t look like they have enough strong arms.

It’s early and things can change, but this certainly hasn’t been the best first impression for the team to make in the first two and a half weeks of the season.