Gabe Kapler. late of the Philadelphia Phillies, was hired Tuesday night to manage the San Francisco ... [+]
The San Francisco Giants had employed just four managers since Roger Craig took over for Jim Davenport with 18 games left in the 1985 season.
Just think about that.
Craig begat Dusty Baker, who made way for Felipe Alou, who was replaced by Bruce Bochy. That’s four big-time managers over the course of 34 years responsible for five National League pennants and three World Series titles.
Under the guidance of general managers Al Rosen and Brian Sabean there weren’t any mistakes.
Enter now, Gabe Kapler as No. 5 since Davenport. It’s the first major decision for Farhan Zaidi during the first 12 months of his term as president of baseball operations, and already Giants fans are howling.
For good reason.
Unlike the above named four skippers, who came to San Francisco with established reputations, Kapler is at best an enigma, having been fired two months ago after his second season manhandling the Philadelphia Phillies.
“It’s going to be impossible for me to fill Bruce Bochy’s shoes, and it’s not something I’ll try to do,” Kapler said during an introductory press conference Wednesday at Oracle Park in San Francisco. “He’s a Hall of Fame manager and beloved in this city and in baseball for so many reasons.”
There’s also the serious question of how he might have mishandled the sexual assault charges by women against two minor leaguers when Kapler worked under Zaidi in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.
Kapler was the farm director and Zaidi the general manager under Andrew Friedman, still the president of baseball operations there.
The Giants are an organization in which the club president, Larry Baer, was suspended for the first three months of this past season under Major League Baseball’s domestic violence program after knocking his wife off a chair under the scrutiny of the public in a San Francisco plaza.
The optics with Kapler are not good.
“I realize the biggest mistake was asking the wrong questions,” Zaidi said about the way they handled the sexual assault charges in Los Angeles during a Tuesday evening conference call reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “We asked, ‘What do we have to do?’ rather than, ‘What is the right thing to do?’ I can only speak for myself, I’m truly sorry from my perspective I didn’t ask the right questions and ask things appropriately.”
The relationship between Kapler and Zaidi is perhaps the main reason why the Giants will now be led by a guy who had a 161-163 record with a Phillies team that was judged to have underperformed, particularly after management spent $330 million this past March 2 over 13 years to sign free agent outfielder Bryce Harper.
“I’m just really looking forward to our fan base and people in this organization getting to know Gabe the way I know him,” Zaidi said. “As they do, I’m very confident it’ll be a strong, positive and lasting relationship.”
On the field, the Phils finished 81-81 this past season, 16 games behind the first-place Atlanta Braves in the National League East and eight games in arrears of the league’s second Wild Card berth.
Kapler had a little bit of low-level managerial experience in the Boston Red Sox minor-league system before being handed the Phillies job. Kapler and the Phillies paid the price. He’s since been replaced by Joe Girardi, who never had a losing season in 10 years of managing the New York Yankees, winning the 2009 World Series in six games over the aforementioned Phillies.
“When you make some of the investments that we made and finish 81-81 and have two tough Septembers in a row, sometimes this happens,” Phils general manager Matt Klentak told The Chronicle at the GM meetings now finishing their third day in the Phoenix area. “Kap brought a lot of good to our organization in those two years and really helped us make up a lot of ground in the industry. I’m a big supporter of him. He’s a big friend, and I’m rooting.”
Kapler was an outfielder of little repute who played 12 years in the Major League for six teams, batting .268 with a lifetime WAR of 8.7, which means he was barely above replacement player level for most of his playing career.
To be sure, he was well-liked by many of his teammates, and at 44 thinks outside the box as a baseball executive and manager with his own thoughts on physical fitness, nutrition and in-game strategy.
Though Kapler’s following the successful and Hall-of-Fame bound Bochy after 13 seasons, the Giants have suffered through three successive losing campaigns and Zaidi is in the process of changing the club’s culture.
Kapler is highly intelligent and already showed this past season that he could learn from his mistakes and make changes. The best hope for the Giants is that he’ll be much better with a different support system in his second managerial job.
“Kap certainly had his challenges, particularly in Year 1,” Klentak said. “There were some pretty high-profile mistakes early, but he learned from it. I think that’s probably been a case for a lot of first-time managers. There’s a lot to learn.”
How this plays out is a story told during the next months and perhaps years. There’s no hiding that fact. Zaidi knew in February that Bochy was leaving and should have hit the ground running with a new manager the day after Bochy’s grandiose exit.
Instead, he hired a man who wasn’t even on his radar until Kapler was fired by the Phillies on Oct. 10.
That tells you all you need to know about Zaidi’s process. The legacy of a proud organization hangs in the balance.
