{"id":800701,"date":"2026-09-09T16:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/800701\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T16:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:24:15","slug":"christian-koss-taking-advantage-of-increased-giants-role-nbc-sports-bay-area-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/800701\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Koss taking advantage of increased Giants role \u2013 NBC Sports Bay Area & California"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO — There are often little plays over the course of nine innings that stick with Tony Vitello, sometimes so much so that he will bring them up on his own before stepping down from the podium at his postgame media session. In the Giants’ win on Tuesday,<\/a> that little play was one that nearly didn’t even make the broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the game came back from a commercial break in the third inning, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn hit a sharp grounder to short. Christian Koss scooped it up as his momentum took him toward third\u00a0base and got rid of it about as quickly as one can. The throw to first bounced once before settling into Rafael Devers’ glove, but it beat the speedy Winn by a step. That quick transfer was the only way Koss was going to prevent a leadoff single.<\/p>\n

“That probably gets lost in the drama towards the end,” Vitello said later. “But it was the best defensive play of the game.”<\/p>\n

The bigger highlight for Koss on this night was a homer in the second that ended up holding up as the game-winner. The Giants won 2-1, with solo shots by Koss and Bryce Eldridge backing a good performance from Landen Roupp.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They will have a chance for a sweep on Tuesday, but in the big picture that won’t matter much. What does matter this time of year is individual performances, and few players have taken advantage of the final stretch like Koss.<\/p>\n

After a solid rookie year, Koss had a bizarre start to the 2026 season. He took the mound as a pitcher before getting an at-bat, and he had just 12 total plate appearances through the end of April.<\/p>\n

With the early roster construction, the easiest path to any playing time for Koss was at shortstop, but Vitello played his veterans just about every day until the wheels started to come off late in the summer, and Koss found himself without much of an avenue to even fill-in at-bats behind Willy Adames. That made for an interesting comparison Tuesday when Vitello was asked about what Koss has done in recent weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He’s playing full throttle nonstop and he’s kind of taken the Willy approach of the off day is my off day,” Vitello said. “With Koss (it has) just been durability, going out there every day, and pitchers know that if they feed it in there and the ball is hit to him, (the hitter) is out. And obviously he’s been a spark plug on offense in a lot of different ways.”<\/p>\n

Even with three homers in the last four games, Koss is only up to a .594 OPS for the season, but he has come a long way. When Adames went down with an injury in Boston, Koss — filling in at third at the time — had an OPS under .500.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vitello said he’s not focused too much on what this means for the future. But these reps matter for young players, and the Giants might have a pretty crowded infield when everyone returns next season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adames, Matt Chapman and Casey Schmitt will be back from injuries and Marcelo Mayer is expected to compete with Schmitt for the second base job. Because Schmitt and Mayer are so versatile and outfielder Jonah Cox can also play second, it’s not automatic that the Giants would have to carry two backup infielders at all times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those are conversations that will happen next spring training, whenever it actually begins. Before then, the front office will have to drastically alter the roster because of all of the losing and all of the late-season changes, which makes this September a good time for any young player to get hot, whether they’re focused on that or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’m not trying to show anything, I’m just trying to go out and play baseball,” Koss said. “You know, it’s the game I love. I’m grateful that it’s for this team, but at the end of the day I’m just trying to play the game and help the team win. Whatever comes out of that comes out of that, but I’m not trying to show that I can hit the ball far or throw hard. I’m just trying to win ball games.”<\/p>\n

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — There are often little plays over the course of nine innings that stick with Tony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,7885,162,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":["post-800701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-giants","tag-baseball","tag-christian-koss","tag-giants","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfranciscogiants","tag-sf","tag-sf-giants","tag-sfgiants"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117242014201622342","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}