SAN FRANCISCO -- Landen Roupp’s final line was not fully indicative of the way he threw the ball Saturday night.
The 27-year-old right-hander struck out seven over 4 2/3 innings, but he was charged with seven runs (five earned) after the Mets found holes and his defense let him down in a 9-0 blowout loss at Oracle Park.
“Pretty frustrating,” Roupp said. “Not much you can do with weak contact in the infield. It’s just kind of the way it goes sometimes.”
San Francisco’s shaky defense committed three errors, which matched the total number of hits the club’s erratic offense produced against New York right-handers Clay Holmes and Tobias Myers.
The Giants (3-6) have been shut out three times in their first nine games and rank 29th in the Majors with a .565 OPS on the season. They’ve been held to only five runs on 25 hits in their six losses, a stark contrast to the 19 runs and 35 hits they’ve banged out in their three wins.
“There’s a lot of ups and downs that can happen,” manager Tony Vitello said. “Obviously, the best teams are the ones that, in my opinion, kind of treat all of them the same and are highly competitive in each one.”
Roupp was brilliant in his 2026 debut against the Padres on Monday, spinning six scoreless innings to lead the Giants to their first win of the year. He came out firing again on Saturday, striking out the first four batters he faced on 22 pitches.
But the Mets ultimately got on the board in the top of the second with the help of some defensive miscues from the Giants. After Mark Vientos doubled and Jared Young walked, Marcus Semien hit a 54.4-mph tapper to the left side that was fielded by shortstop Willy Adames.
Adames threw to first base, but Jerar Encarnacion had to come off the bag to catch the ball, allowing Semien to reach on an infield single and load the bases with one out. That brought up Carson Benge, who bounced another softly-hit grounder that was fumbled by third baseman Matt Chapman.
Chapman managed to recover the ball and fire to first, but his low throw got past Encarnacion, scoring two runs and resulting in a pair of errors for the Giants’ corner infielders. Luis Torrens followed with an RBI groundout to extend the Mets’ lead to 3-0.
“I definitely think Landen threw better than what the box score says,” Vitello said. “[The Mets] have done a really good job of swinging the bat. A really, really good job of swinging the bat. But also, you’d be hard-pressed to find an inning where they scored where there wasn’t potential for the inning to be over, or there wasn’t a free pass in there.
“On defense, we can certainly do better.”
The Mets broke the game open with a five-run fifth that was capped by Tyrone Taylor’s pinch-hit, three-run homer off left-hander Ryan Borucki. New York delivered four singles -- including RBI hits from Bo Bichette and Mark Vientos -- to chase Roupp, who departed after throwing 95 pitches and left runners on the corners with two outs.
Vitello brought in Borucki to face the left-handed-hitting Young, but Mets manager Carlos Mendoza countered by subbing in Taylor, who proceeded to crush a 1-2 splitter over the center-field fence for his fifth career pinch-hit homer.
Borucki has held opposing left-handed hitters to a .523 OPS over his career, but he’s been vulnerable against righties, who have posted an .848 OPS against him. Taylor’s blast was the second homer Borucki has allowed to a right-handed hitter this year, as he also surrendered a solo shot to Aaron Judge during the Giants’ opening series against the Yankees.
“All it was tonight was a two-strike pitch that got floated, really, if you break it down,” Vitello said. “Prior to that, he was in a good spot.”
The game got so lopsided that the Giants opted to pull center fielder Harrison Bader and catcher Patrick Bailey in the top of the eighth and replace them with Jared Oliva and Daniel Susac, respectively. Infielder Christian Koss is still waiting to get his first at-bat of the season, but he saw action on the mound Saturday, working a scoreless ninth on nine pitches to keep his 0.00 career ERA intact.
With the outing, Koss became the first primary Giants position player to throw five scoreless innings in his career since George “High Pockets” Kelly accomplished the feat in 1917.