Nice job, you responsible dingus.<\/a> Now the floor is clear for the irresponsible folks. They\u2019re loud in the normal months, but they\u2019re twice as loud in April. This is when everything can be blamed on a new manager or a hitting coach or the roster or the defense or their least favorite player or the ownership or the front office or the schedule or Mercury being in Capricorn or whatever happens to be at the front of their minds. These voices are so, so loud right now.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to stay normal in these troubling times.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to express just how grateful I am that it\u2019s Matt Chapman who has been the personification of everything that has gone wrong for the 2026 San Francisco Giants. His entire brand has been as a player who does everything right, all the time, everywhere he\u2019s played. He runs well, he catches the ball, he throws the ball well and he hits the ball very, very far. He could stand to hit the ball more often, but that\u2019s more about the modern game (and modern pitchers). Chapman has been the consummate professional everywhere he\u2019s gone. He\u2019s the perfect example for this article.<\/p>\n Why? Because Chapman has made two months\u2019 worth of bad plays in the first week-and-a-half of the season, with errors both in judgment and fielding. He became the story for calling out a teammate on the mound, and while it could be an example of typical dugout dynamics, it\u2019s a scrap of information to fill the meaningful-information vacuum. Before the bizarre caught-stealing on Sunday, there were only a few scraps of information, but a lot of them had to do with Chapman. Then there was the bizarre caught-stealing, which was a pretty big scrap. He\u2019s played horribly to start the season, and he\u2019d probably be the first to tell you that \u2026 if he wanted to talk, which he apparently does not<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Chapman is as well-rounded as baseball players come in the modern game, making his early-season struggles and mental mistakes at odds with his long track record. (Robert Edwards \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n The irresponsible part of your brain wants there to be an answer for this. Now. And as someone whose job it is to also have answers, boy, do I get it. It would be so much easier if Chapman realized that his shoelaces were tied a little too tight, and a simple solution could fix everything. To get to the simple solution, you first need a simple reason for the problem.<\/p>\n With a clear-cut answer, you\u2019ll see those simple reasons for his poor play. For example, I\u2019ve read some suggesting that Chapman misses his old manager and friend, Bob Melvin, or that he hates his new manager or maybe it\u2019s a little of both. Toxic clubhouse vibes are to blame, or it\u2019s the Giants\u2019 pull-happy approach, or it\u2019s a dark cloud over the entire franchise. When you\u2019re reducing the problems of a veteran like Chapman down to a single reason or cause, though, you\u2019re describing a thought bubble over a character\u2019s head in a comic book. You are not describing how real people actually live or think.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more likely: Chapman has no idea what\u2019s been going on with his defense or decision making, but he\u2019s pretty sure he\u2019ll figure it out. He doesn\u2019t have a great answer, and it\u2019s gnawing at him like nobody\u2019s business, but he\u2019ll keep doing Matt Chapman things, and they\u2019ll eventually help the team again. That\u2019s a fictional inner monologue, to be clear, but it makes sense to me. I\u2019m not as accomplished as a writer as Chapman is as a baseball player, but I can definitely go into slumps. Deep, dark slumps where the ideas aren\u2019t coming, and my fingers aren\u2019t in the same time signature as my brain, and they rattle. The only way I get out of them is to keep typing and have faith in my ability to create nonsense that people read for some reason.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the likely answer to the Chapman problem, specifically, and\u00a0you\u2019ll remember his first-week weirdness as vividly as you remember the \u201ctorpedo bat\u201d storylines from last season. It\u2019s so much easier to imagine with him, too, because Reliable Matt Chapman has been a Bay Area institution for almost a decade now.<\/p>\n Take note that he\u2019s stunk so far, and pin the scrap of information to a very, very large bulletin board that still has plenty of unused space. Notice that a lot of the scraps so far have Chapman\u2019s name on them, and that stands out when there aren\u2019t a lot of other names up there. Look at all of the hitters below the Mendoza Line (four regulars) and hitters with multiple home runs (there aren\u2019t any). Pin them up there, too. Logan Webb\u2019s slow start. The lack of left-handed bench bats. The hamstring injury to Rafael Devers leading to the defensive malpractice at first base.<\/p>\n![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/USATSI_28645038-scaled.jpg\")
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