Why Melvin felt it was necessary to shake up Giants lineup originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — During his first season as a Giant, Matt Chapman started games everywhere from the second spot in the order through the seventh. Heliot Ramos went even further in his breakout season, hitting in every spot except for ninth.
That was normal for the Giants in 2024 and the previous five seasons. Under the last regime, it seemed the lineup underwent big changes every day, and players got used to not knowing where they would hit the next game. The first six weeks of 2025 have been dramatically different, with continuity being put above all else, but on Monday, there were finally some notable changes.
Coming off a three-game sweep in Minnesota that included a couple of ugly offensive performances, Bob Melvin shook things up. Chapman was moved to second in the order and Willy Adames, who has hit there all year, was bumped down to sixth. Ramos was the hottest hitter on the road trip and moved up to third, with Jung Loo Lee sliding down to the cleanup spot.
The biggest difference was lower in the lineup, though. Melvin has kept Wilmer Flores in the DH spot all year, but LaMonte Wade Jr. was out of the lineup against a right-hander on Monday, with Flores at first and Luis Matos at DH.
“We’ve been pretty structured in the lineup to this point and we’ve been a little bit down offensively, so it’s a little change of scenery,” Melvin said before the game. “I think guys tend to like that sometimes.”
There was no spark on the first night with a new look, although it probably wasn’t a great idea to try it against Merrill Kelly, who has so thoroughly dominated the Giants in recent years that at times they have joked of pulling a lineup out of a hat. For the third time in four games, the Giants scored just one run.
The drought has dropped the Giants to 20th in team wRC+, but really, there were issues long before they arrived in Minnesota to face a good pitching staff over the weekend. The Giants have struggled to reach base all season long, and their lineup has been carried by just two or three guys at a time. For most of the year, it has been Mike Yastrzemski and Lee; over the last week, it has basically just been the Ramos Show.
Adames has yet to join the party in the first year of the largest contract in franchise history. He hit second — where teams often put their best hitter — in his first 41 appearances as a Giant, but Melvin said he wanted to change the shortstop’s focus. Adames drove in 112 runs last year and the hope is that moving him down can get him back in that mode, and bring his old swing back in general. Adames has looked better in recent weeks after an extremely slow start, but he was batting just .217 with a .632 OPS at the time of the switch.
That would be the lowest OPS of his career by nearly 100 points, but it’s not even close to being the roughest start among the regulars. Patrick Bailey is at .477, although there’s not really much the Giants can do there. Bailey has been working to find his way out of a slump that goes back to the second half of last season, but he’s so valuable defensively that he’ll continue to be in the lineup as often as possible.
The same can’t be said at first base, where the Giants opted to stand pat in the offseason and let Wade be the bridge to the eventual start of the Bryce Eldridge era. There were high hopes this spring when Wade stayed healthy, but he is hitting .145 with a .491 OPS and just one home run.
Wade went 0-for-9 during the Twins series and Melvin identified the start of this homestand as the right time to give his first baseman a physical and mental breather. The struggles have come in part because of a .185 batting average on balls in play, a sign of some bad luck early on this season. Melvin said Wade would start Tuesday, but the Giants face a lefty on Wednesday and are off Thursday, so he’ll get three light days out of four at the start of this week.
“It’s just getting him a little bit of distance right now,” Melvin said. “The work he’s putting in is pretty extreme. It’s not like he’s sitting around pouting — he’s working like crazy, and for a guy that has had as much success as he has, this is really hard. The longer it goes on the harder it is, so I’m just trying to give him a little bit of a mental break.”
Melvin was adamant Monday that Wade will continue to be the primary first baseman, but the Giants could soon have some other options. The staff doesn’t want Flores to play the field too often because there’s a fear that it will lead to injuries, so he will continue to be the everyday DH for the most part. But Jerar Encarnacion has started a rehab assignment and Casey Schmitt isn’t far behind. Encarnacion, in particular, could wind up being the answer if Wade continues to struggle.
The power-hitting outfielder has missed all year with a left-hand fracture, but when he returns, it will be as a first baseman. Melvin said Encarnacion, who has some experience at first in the minors but just one big league start there, will “play quite a bit” of first base when he returns. Initially, it will be against lefties, but there certainly is an opening for that to change.
Encarnacion isn’t eligible to be activated until May 26. In the meantime, Melvin is hoping that changes to his lineup lead to better days for the entire group, and the impacted players feel the same way.
“Maybe some guys will take some more pressure off themselves,” Chapman said. “Sometimes that’s what happens. If you’re at the top of the lineup and it’s not going great, you go down a little bit — it’s happened to me a million times. You go down, you take a little bit of pressure off yourself, you get rolling, and then you’re right back up there. I think that’s kind of the idea, to shake it up a little bit and see if we can get a few more runs.”
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