How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Accept, If Not Love, The Giants’ New Braintrust.
It was probably always going to turn out like this. From the moment that Bruce Bochy’s final season of his Hall of Fame career as Giants manager ended, the tea leaves were in the air on who his successor would be. Writing in The Athletic, veteran Giants beat reporter Andrew Baggarly read between the lines of President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi’s year-end press conference, when he spoke, without naming names, of managers who benefited from the “learning curve” of an unsuccessful first job. Baggarly named names though, one in particular who, days later, would be fired from his first managerial job with the Philadelphia Phillies. That would be Gabe Kapler.
As I wrote three weeks ago, my reservations about the idea were aplenty. And I didn’t even mention what has since become the main source of controversy surrounding Kapler’s hire- his alleged mishandling of sexual misconduct issues while he was serving as director of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor league system. In a tense, uneasy press conference that lasted more than an hour, Kapler was not at his best in answering questions about the issue, of which there were many. At one point he said that he should have consulted his mother more, which, while certainly an admirable sentiment in a vaccum, came across as awkward.
As more facts have emerged about what Kapler did and did not do in response to these incidents, I tend to lean towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. Several seasoned writers whose journalistic acumen I respect, both men and women, have done good work with their writing about the issue to help me come to that conclusion. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser wrote about the details of the Major League Baseball investigation that cleared Kapler of any wrongdoing. Answering a reader question on his blog, ESPN’s Keith Law was unequivocal in saying “The public story on that (this was before Slusser wrote about the MLB investigation’s findings) is simply false. He didn’t cover anything up; from talking to multiple people involved, including Kapler, it sounds like he handled it appropriately, and the subsequent accusations, which come from an employee the Dodgers fired, are not accurate. If this were a story, I’d write it, and certainly wouldn’t support a candidate who’d mishandled such cases. I believe I have the facts, however, and that just isn’t what happened.”
That still leaves the question of whether or not Kapler is the right baseball choice for the job. Many of his detractors point argue that Kapler’s Phillies teams should have made the playoffs with their collection of talent. After studying this further, I tend to believe that this is at best misleading. In 2018, Kapler’s first year as skipper, the team’s win loss record of 80–82 was actually an improvement of fourteen games from the previous season. The team had no stars in the lineup, with only one position player and one pitcher each worth more than three Wins Above Replacement according to the leading sabermetric website Fangraphs.
My chief concern with Kapler was, in fact, what that hire would demonstrate about the mindset of Farhan Zaidi, who is ultimately at the top of the decision pyramid in this new era of Giants baseball. Zaidi and Kapler had already worked together in the Dodgers organization, and at the time I wrote my previous article, it was believed that the frontrunner to be the General Manager, Zaidi’s right hand in the front office, was someone from the Oakland A’s, where Zaidi had worked before the Dodgers. I worried that only hiring people he was familiar with would reflect a tendency towards the safe and familiar, towards groupthink, that does not well serve any organization well, let alone a high profile sports franchise.
Fortunately, to me at least, the choice of General Manager did much to put this concern to bed. The Giants hired Scott Harris, a thirty-two year old Bay Area native who had previously been Assistant General Manager of the Chicago Cubs. That organization gives Harris significant pedigree, as he was part of the rebuilding of that team from the ground up, drafting and trading for star players like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Javier Baez, ultimately breaking the century-long world series drought that that franchise and its fans had suffered. The Cubs built a winning organization just as the Dodgers did with the help of Zaidi and Kapler, but did it in a different way, and were able to accomplish what the Dodgers have so far not managed- the World Series title.
Despite all of that, I do find it regrettable that the Giants’ successor to Bruce Bochy, a man as universally beloved as you can get in sports, has already polarized the fanbase so. Many do not want to embrace someone with even the whiff of a scandal like Kapler; Giants writer Sami Higgins declared on a podcast that she would not spend any money on the team while he was manager. That is anyone’s right to do, of course, and she may not be alone, particularly if (as is expected) the next season or two is a harsh rebuild for the team.
The bitter irony is, if the Giants had gone with the man who was apparently their alternate top choice for the job, that that hire would have come with significant baggage attached, if not more so. Astros bench coach Joe Espada was the other apparent finalist, and that organization is now mired in arguably the biggest baseball scandal since the steroid era. Each day, new revelations emerge about how the Astros, just one month ago considered the model of a successful baseball organization, may have illegally used technology to “steal signs” that opposing catchers and pitchers used to decide what to throw during the 2017 season, if not even more recently.
Freshly hired New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran, a player on the Astros team that won the World Series in seven games over Zaidi’s Dodgers, has himself been implicated in the scandal. And while Kapler has already been cleared of wrongdoing by an official investigation, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Beltran could be suspended just as he is taking over the Mets, a disaster for that ballclub, just as it would have been a disaster for the Giants for such a fate to befall new manager Joe Espada.
Ultimately, the verdict on the new Gabe Kapler era of Giants baseball will be delivered on the field. Kapler is in the unenviable position of having to prove himself to much of the fanbase right away at a time when the club is rebuilding, and will likely not be competitive for the postseason this season or the one after that. That may end up dooming his tenure before he has a chance to manage a single major league game. But I do think that his primary strength- working with young players- could be exactly what a rebuilding team needs as the next generation of Giants talent starts to make its way up from the minor leagues. And that is why, despite my previous reservations, I will be cautiously optimistic about what the future holds for the Giants.
