Giants Bulletin: Giants’ brutal opening series worse for optics than standings

By Jack Loder

Three games of a Major League Baseball season is about as small as a sample size gets. If the Giants had lost these three straight in June, little would be made of the futile skid. But optics matter, in baseball and in life. And with the eyes of the baseball world on Netflix at Oracle Park on Wednesday night, and on Fox on Saturday afternoon, and a mercifully smaller more local audience Friday, the Giants flopped, spectacularly. It couldn’t have been a worse start to the Tony Vitello era. 

In the bottom of the first inning of the season on Wednesday night, the Giants put runners at the corners with one out. Willy Adames struck out, before Jung Hoo Lee grounded out to end the frame. It would be the Giants best chance to score in what was eventually a 7-0 loss. On Friday, they didn’t have such an opportunity. San Francisco only managed one hit, dominated by Cam Schlittler. A one out double from Heliot Ramos was the only time the Giants had a runner in scoring position before Matt Chapman took second and third on defensive indifference with two outs in the ninth. They lost 3-0. 

Finally, as Andy Dufresne gazed at the clouds after crawling through 500 yards of foul smelling who knows what, the Giants got on the board in 2026. In the third inning of Saturday’s series finale, Jung Hoo Lee smoked a double. Luis Arraez drove him in with a single up the middle, and a sarcastic roar came from the third straight sellout crowd at 3rd & King. But the single tally would be all the Giants could muster, although they collected nine hits. It was a much more frustrating game than Wednesday and Friday, which took on a depressing vibe. The Giants failed to scratch across a run in the ninth down a pair, even with runners on first and second and nobody out. 

It’s difficult to zero in on a single culprit to blame the Giants’ early offensive woes on. Patrick Bailey and Casey Schmitt, starters in all three games, are still hitless on the season. Bailey grounded into a particularly painful pair of inning (and game) ending double plays on Saturday. Schmitt was downright useless. Harrison Bader picked up a knock, but was largely uncompetitive at the plate all weekend long. Jung Hoo Lee’s double that led to the team’s only run was his only knock. Shockingly, the club only managed three extra base hits over the weekend, and didn’t come remotely close to a single home run. 

Things can almost literally go nowhere but up from here. 

It wasn’t all bad on Opening weekend. The Giants’ pitching staff, seen as a weakness in Spring Training, was actually quite good against the Yankees. If you take out Logan Webb’s disastrous third inning on Opening Night in which he surrendered five runs over the course of eight torturous pitches, the Giants gave up just eight runs in 26 innings. Robbie Ray and Tyler Mahle both took the loss in their season debuts, but both pitched well enough to get the team a win had the offense pulled its weight. The bullpen was a trendy preseason target for the Giants weak link, but the relief arms enjoyed a good showing in the season’s first three games. Keaton Winn and Caleb Killian were especially good. Let’s see how the bullpen pitches with a lead, something the team hasn’t had at any point in 2026. 

Brian Murphy summed up the Giants’ pathetic first weekend early on Monday’s KNBR morning show. 

John Dickinson and Greg Silver discussed the early returns on Buster Posey as a President of Baseball Operations. How much benefit of the doubt should the franchise legend get?

Do the Giants need to win their fourth game of the season from a contention standpoint? No, of course not. But from a morale standpoint, a win would go a long way in slowing the heart rates of the fantical fringe, and of a rookie manager.