SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants could not say it publicly, or even out loud, but they would not at all have been surprised in February and March if you told them that they would get off to a slow start. 

Seven of the first eight opponents on their schedule have realistic MLB playoff hopes, and the opening two weeks — New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies — is about as tough as it gets without having to make a trip to Dodger Stadium.

The 3-7 start is not a shock, but the way the Giants have gotten here is unexpected, and not at all what president of baseball operations Buster Posey envisioned when he fired Bob Melvin and pulled Tony Vitello out of the college game. 

Melvin was let go in part because the Giants couldn’t consistently play clean baseball in the second half last season. Their first 10 games under Vitello have had a similar vibe, and the offense looks just as sluggish as it did last July and August. 

There are the obvious mistakes, and Sunday’s 5-2 loss to the Mets had a few of them. Matt Chapman got thrown out trying to steal second down by three in the ninth — a decision that there was no good explanation for after the loss. Jerar Encarnación was slow getting out of the box and got thrown out at second on a potential double off the left field wall. There was a catcher’s interference and also a batter’s interference, with the latter leading to Vitello getting ejected for the first time as a big league manager.

But if you watched these first 10 games, you also saw a lot of subtle mistakes. The simplest way to put it is that the ball is just in the dirt far too often. Vitello referred to it as “catching the ball better” on the first homestand, and the Giants seem to be heading in the wrong direction. Several times a game, a throw seems to get away, or a middle infielder is late putting a tag down.

“Disappointing, and we want better,” Vitello said of the sloppiness. “You could pull them out case by case and say, ‘Well, this one just had a little bit of this, or this one had a little bit of this,’ but where there’s smoke, there’s fire and there’s too much of it.”

This is not who the Giants expected to be after a spring in which the fundamentals were hammered over and over again. And it’s certainly not the way they can play with this roster, which came into the 2026 MLB season with some holes. 

The one area where the Giants figured they had no issues was the lineup, but so far that has been a massive disappointment. They have just 26 runs through 10 games, which ranks last in the majors. They’re last in OPS by 44 points, and entering Sunday, there wasn’t a single everyday player with a wRC+ that was league-average. Most Giants aren’t even close to that mark. 

The scary thing about those numbers is the fact that the Giants are as healthy as they’ll be all year on the position player side. They watched the Mets lose Juan Soto to a calf strain in the first inning Friday, but New York kept churning along while winning three of four. 

The Mets outscored the Giants by 14 runs in the four-game series. Overall, the Giants have been outscored by 25 runs, the worst differential in baseball.

“We’ve run into some good pitching, but there’s good pitching across the league,” catcher Patrick Bailey said. “We have good game plans going into it. I don’t know. I think it’s just kind of everybody is struggling. They say hitting is contagious, and I think the one thing we have to do a better job with is to control what we can control. 

“I think if we play clean baseball, we’ll at least get some wins even though we’re not swinging it as good as we’re capable of swinging.”

Bailey’s single and stolen base helped the Giants tie the game and then take the lead behind Logan Webb on Sunday, but when he handed that over to the bullpen, the Mets pounced. They scored four runs in the eighth off Keaton Winn and Erik Miller, who are two of the three relievers — along with Ryan Walker — who have been given late-innings roles early on by Vitello.

The bullpen generally had pitched well over the first couple of series, but Sunday was the first time that the group was asked to hold a lead smaller than three runs. It was a disaster, and kind of summed up where the Giants are right now. Through 10 games, it’s hard to figure out what this team does well.

The lineup and defense have been massive disappointments. The rotation has had some highs — Webb looked like Webb on Sunday — and hasn’t gotten much help from the gloves, but the group also has a 4.53 ERA 

It has been an ugly start, with really just one silver lining. There’s a long way to go. 

“We’re 10 games in,” Webb said. “I’m obviously not making any excuses or saying it’s OK that we’re playing this way. It starts with me — I have not pitched well at all. But like I said, there’s 152 games left in the season. I don’t really look at the standings very often, but I bet you if we looked at the standings it would probably say we’re two games out of a wild-card spot, so I think before anyone hits the panic button, I think you’ve just got to take a deep breath.

“We’ve played some good teams. Just go out there tomorrow and try to compete. That’s it, that’s all you’ve got to do.”

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