May 15, 2026<\/a><\/p>\nThe Giants offense got shushed Wednesday night by Shohei Ohtani, and their hitters went down almost as quietly against right-hander Emmet Sheehan. Most notably, Casey Schmitt had a miserable night as the designated hitter, striking out in all four of his plate appearances.<\/p>\n
And Matt Chapman has been so silent at the plate in May that he might need a library card to check his bat out of the rack.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a cruel game. On a night when Lee somehow turned a 73.2 mph snort into a home run, Chapman staged another losing battle while hoping for a conventional one. He\u2019s still sitting on one home run this season, which came back on March 31 at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
Chapman was hitting a respectable .271 with a .353 on-base percentage at the end of April, but even those modest numbers have plummeted over the past two frustrating weeks. He is 4-for-43 in May with two walks and 15 strikeouts. Home runs aside, he\u2019d probably give anything to touch the plate. He hasn\u2019t scored a run since April 30, in Game 1 of a doubleheader in Philadelphia. The 14-game streak without scoring a run is the longest of his 10-year career, surpassing an 11-game streak in 2018 with the Oakland A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
When analyzing a struggling hitter, sometimes a quick peek into the Statcast data will yield inconclusive or conflicting information. With Chapman, the issue screams at you louder than the thumping, center field speakers in Chavez Ravine.<\/p>\n
His average launch angle is 8.1 degrees, which is down steeply from his career average of 17.1 degrees. His attack angle, which measures his bat position at the intercept point with the ball, is 3 degrees, which is a drastic change from his 6-degree average in each of the previous two seasons. It\u2019s also one of the flattest attack angles in the major leagues. The league average is 10 degrees. Only four qualified hitters have a flatter attack angle than 3 degrees and two of them, the Mets\u2019 Bo Bichette and the Blue Jays\u2019 Vladimir Guerrero Jr., are going through pronounced power outages as well.<\/p>\n
Chapman\u2019s bat speed also continues to rank in the 92nd percentile, which would suggest his issues are entirely mechanical and, in theory, fixable. How to get there remains the question of the hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys throw hard in this league, guys throw a lot of four-seam (fastballs), so I\u2019d been working on getting on top of fastballs,\u201d Chapman said prior to Thursday\u2019s game. \u201cAnd then I really started getting on top of the ball. And then I\u2019m not driving the ball in the air as much as I\u2019m accustomed to doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly why. I just know that I always make a point in the offseason to be on top of the ball with thoughts of being a good hitter, and maybe I took it to the extreme. It\u2019s something I\u2019m aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman received a text message about it from Boras Corp. vice president Mike Fiore and followed up with in-person discussions during batting practice. Fiore, a former infielder who played on Team USA\u2019s 1988 Olympics squad, said the numbers told such a clear story that he had to mention them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to know that\u2019s what you\u2019re doing but it\u2019s another to go out and fix it,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cThe last thing I want to do is try to hit homers. But I\u2019m aware that what I\u2019m doing right now is not sustainable and it\u2019s not the player I am. So I\u2019m willing to make those changes. But I\u2019ve got to figure out how I want to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It might help that new Giants hitting coach Hunter Mense is familiar with Chapman\u2019s swing. Mense was a hitting assistant with the Blue Jays during Chapman\u2019s two-year stint in Toronto from 2022-23, including a scorching run in his final season that resulted in the American League Player of the Month award for April. Chapman hit .384 with 15 doubles and five home runs in the month. Although a hand injury derailed his momentum that season, he was still leading the league in doubles as late as the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen him when he was essentially the best hitter in the big leagues for a period of time,\u201d Mense said. \u201cHe was doing serious damage. He wasn\u2019t really striking out. He could do anything he wanted with the bat. I\u2019ve seen him hit for power. I\u2019ve seen a bunch of different tools in his belt. It helps knowing the swing, but I think it helps me more just knowing the person \u2014 knowing who he is and what he needs and what he doesn\u2019t need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman has gone through stretches like this before. During his first season as a Giant in 2024, he hit two homers during a season-opening series at San Diego and then went cold, hitting just three homers over a 45-game span that reached into mid-May. Then he homered in three consecutive games at Pittsburgh and finished with 27 for the year.<\/p>\n
His way out of that power slump two years ago was to get in a stronger position with his lower half. So that\u2019s what he\u2019s working to achieve now. Although he was one of the hottest hitters in the Cactus League this spring, a taller, narrower and more open stance hasn\u2019t served him well thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thinking if I can start using my legs more, my base a little bigger, that will allow me to drive through the ball,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cJust clean up everything from there, as opposed to me trying to think, \u2018Oh, I need to lift the ball.\u2019 So I\u2019d like to get back to that, back to coming in with some length. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an overnight thing. We\u2019ll just continue to work on getting in a better position and trust that everything evens out from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Giants would welcome that. They\u2019re already getting much better and more productive at-bats from Rafael Devers in May. Willy Adames was hitting .194 on May 6 before recording multiple hits in five of six games. The Giants are 18-25 but entering a softer pocket of the schedule to end the month \u2014 three games against the Athletics at Sacramento and three at Arizona, followed by a homestand against the Chicago White Sox and Diamondbacks, then a road trip that begins with a three-game series against the Colorado Rockies. If the Giants can get the beating heart of their offense pumping homers over the fence, it\u2019s not hard to imagine an 11-4 record over that pocket that would allow the Giants to hit the reset button and enter June with a .500 record.<\/p>\n
If only establishing liftoff were so easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tricky because you don\u2019t want to \u2026 go the opposite way, and then you start missing underneath a lot of fastballs,\u201d Mense said. \u201cSo much of it goes into his intent, what he\u2019s trying to do. When it\u2019s going really well, none of that\u2019s really a thought. It just happens and he\u2019ll drive balls in the air like he did in spring training and like he\u2019s done the rest of his career. But when he tries to overexaggerate things, and then you\u2019re kind of bouncing back and forth. We just haven\u2019t quite found the groove yet. It\u2019s not for a lack of work or a lack of trying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still so much season ahead. He\u2019s been a good big-league hitter for a long, long time. Each year presents different issues or different problems that you have to kind of figure out, but he\u2019s consistently found ways to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Giants have other lineup questions to answer. They haven\u2019t figured out how to incorporate rookie Bryce Eldridge on a day-to-day basis, and in retrospect, maybe it wasn\u2019t such a good idea to pick the two games against Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to start him in Los Angeles. Eldridge\u2019s ability to take a walk might have made Roki Sasaki a better matchup in Monday\u2019s series opener, and for Sheehan, who leans heavily on a high fastball, a 6-foot-7 left-handed hitter probably wouldn\u2019t have been a welcome sight.<\/p>\n
The Giants also have to think through the playing time at catcher now that Daniel Susac is primed to be activated for Friday\u2019s series opener at Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Now that the Giants have additional lineup options, there will be additional pressure on anyone who isn\u2019t performing.<\/p>\n
But Chapman is signed through 2030. In every sense, the Giants are invested in getting him right again.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as we keep at it, it\u2019s gonna click,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s gonna stick.\u201d<\/p>\n