Gabe Kapler knew Buster Posey was watching most if not all of the Giants’ games this season. He knew that Posey would have valuable insights and opinions. But he didn’t want to bombard him with texts and calls. Posey opted out of playing in 2020 so he could protect the health of his family, which now includes two prematurely born little girls. That’s where his focus needed to be, and Kapler wanted to respect that.
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But as Kapler began the process of digesting a 29-31 season and a near playoff appearance, Posey was one of the first people he dialed up.
“We discussed his perspective from afar about the job our coaching staff did,” Kapler said. “He had high praise particularly for our hitting coaches and was impressed by our ability to score runs and string big innings together, and specifically called out the work Donnie, Justin and Dustin did in the cage going back to spring training. I know he’s excited to work with those guys going forward.”
That would be Donnie Ecker, Justin Viele and Dustin Lind — the Giants’ trio of hitting coaches who used technology to refine swing mechanics, data to break down opposing pitchers and the power of persuasion to develop a selective but aggressive team-wide approach that resulted in perhaps the most prominent year-over-year offensive improvement in franchise history.
Those three coaches will receive plenty of credit. But here is where Giants president Farhan Zaidi has to interject:
So should the guy who hired them.
“I mean, our hitting coaches get a ton of credit for the job they did and rightfully so, but it was a pretty bold strategy to put together a three-man group who had a combined one year of experience at the major-league level,” Zaidi said. “And that’s a credit to Gabe and the work he did putting his staff together.”
It stood out back in October and November, when Zaidi and general manager Scott Harris would ask one of their stock questions to managerial candidates: What ideas do you have for your coaching staff?
“Nobody was more prepared to talk about what their staff would look like and the specific ideas they had for people who would be good coaches for this organization than Gabe did,” Zaidi said. “It was one of the reasons he won so many people over — that level of preparation and attention to detail.
“The staff as a whole deserves a lot of credit, but he deserves a lot of credit for putting this staff together, taking chances on the staff — and taking chances on the size of the staff, which got a lot of skepticism early in the season. But as the season played out, it was a huge asset for us and a huge area of competitive advantage for us.”
Kapler’s 13-person coaching staff became an asset in a season when COVID-19 protocols meant that players had to be more isolated than ever before and spend as little time as possible at the ballpark. Meetings had to be staggered and spread out. Facilities had to be used in waves. Communication was more individual and more important than ever. An expanded roster increased those responsibilities. Taxi squad players that tagged along on road trips had to get in their reps to stay sharp, too.
The Giants had a plan to be disruptors with their coaching roles. Instead, pandemic baseball became the disruptive force. And Kapler’s staff had the broad bandwidth to deal with it.
“Remember, this was the first time any of these coaches worked together,” Kapler said. “Many coaching staffs in baseball have worked together for two, three, four, five years. I thought we weathered a pretty significant storm this season from a number of different angles and will be better off for having this experience together and are going to be better prepared to compete next year.”
It was the first time most of the coaches worked in the big leagues, period. Ecker, 33, was hired after spending one season as the hitting assistant for the Cincinnati Reds. Viele, 29, was a Dodgers minor-league coach. Lind, 31, had no professional playing experience and a background in physical therapy. Assistant coach Alyssa Nakken became the first female major-league coach in baseball history.
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Nine of Kapler’s 12 new hires never played a game in the big leagues. Three of them never played a game in the minors, either. Third-base coach Ron Wotus, the longest-tenured coach in franchise history, spent his 23rd season in a Giants uniform. The rest of Kapler’s staff had 7 1/2 years of major-league experience combined. And pitching director Brian Bannister, 38, was the oldest among the new hires. Perhaps most visibly, the vital bench coach role went to former Cleveland Indians minor-league defensive coordinator Kai Correa, a 31-year-old with no professional playing experience or major-league coaching experience.
As Jeff Samardzija cracked when he arrived in spring training, “We just need to figure out who the coaches are and who the players are and we’ll be good to go.”
It was a coaching staff geared toward treating the big leagues like another level of development. In that way of thinking, Kapler was as much a farm director as a manager. It was unconventional in many respects. And in many respects, it worked.
“It was definitely different from having the same group for so many years,” said shortstop Brandon Crawford, whose .465 slugging percentage and 116 OPS+ were the best of his career — even better than his Silver Slugger season in 2015. “It was different coaches, different philosophies. But I think a lot of it worked. You look at what our team did this year and nobody expected that. As hitters, we had a really good idea what pitchers were trying to do this year, which was maybe a little different from years past.”
The hitting philosophy was simple: only swing when you believe you can do damage, and regardless of count, take your best swing as often as possible.
“It worked great,” said Mike Yastrzemski, who used virtual reality simulators to build on his breakout rookie season while leading the majors in Win Probability Added. “This was such an uncertain year and they adapted great. They made us feel comfortable. They gave us every opportunity, new tools, new technology. It showed just how much it benefited us. We definitely outperformed our expectations. I’m very happy with this group’s effort.”
Rookies improved. Veterans like Crawford and Brandon Belt improved. The development-driven staff deserves credit for that.
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But what about game management? Anyone charged with replacing a three-time World Series-winning legend like Bruce Bochy would be under the microscope with every pitching change and pinch-hitting decision. Kapler might as well have arrived on a glass lab slide, given his public slip-ups in two middling seasons in Philadelphia.
There was one of those early this season, too, when he inattentively followed up a mound visit from pitching coach Andrew Bailey with one of his own, and wasn’t able to take right-hander Tyler Rogers out of an extra-inning game as a result.
Sometimes, he showed faith in a struggling reliever and was rewarded for it. Other bullpen decisions, like getting burned for doubling down on Trevor Gott during an extremely rough patch or sending out a shaky Sam Coonrod in the third to last game of the season, will linger in the memory of fans — especially when the Giants only needed to win one more game to slip into a best-of-three postseason series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But on the whole, bullpen performance improved as the season went on. And you only need to reflect on the second half of 2016 to know that even a manager of Bochy’s stature will look bad when forced to select from so many unreliable relievers.
Other changes were less noticeable but worked. Kapler successfully employed the opener with Caleb Baragar to help a struggling young starter, Logan Webb, settle in and beat the Rockies on the final homestand. He assigned his highest leverage relievers to pockets of opposing lineups, not set innings. He wasn’t afraid to pinch hit in the second or third inning if it meant getting a matchup.
“As we went through the season, I thought Gabe did a great job with in-game managing,” Zaidi said. “This was a roster that required proactive management, that required matching up at certain times. We didn’t have starters working deep in games. He had to patch it together with Andrew Bailey. A lot of games we had to get nine, 12, 15 outs out of the bullpen and that’s really hard to do.”
The novelty of the designated hitter ensured that Kapler wouldn’t have to worry about double switches. But there was nothing easy about managing pandemic baseball.
“There was an adjustment period for sure,” third baseman Evan Longoria said. “I was expecting it to be different, obviously, because Boch is definitely on one end of the spectrum and Gabe might be near the other end on the way they approach the game from an analytic standpoint and their beliefs in general. But it was not as different as I thought it was going to be.
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“Obviously there were changes we weren’t used to seeing — lineup construction and guys getting pinch hit for early in games. All in all, it worked in our favor a lot of times. We won a lot of games because of the way we structured our lineup or put guys in certain situations to be able to succeed.”
Defensively, the Giants shifted more than ever and the early results weren’t pretty. They struggled with continuity and made errors and fundamental miscues. But their defensive play stabilized to a large extent. Look up at the end of the season and shifts resulted in five defensive runs saved, according to the Fielding Bible — tied with the Dodgers for the fourth-most in the National League. Mauricio Dubón, a player who learned center field on the fly, led the Giants with three defensive runs saved at the position.
All of that reinforces what Kapler said at the Winter Meetings when the Giants announced eight new, mostly non-traditional hires to the coaching staff: “If you can teach, you can teach. And if you can coach, you can coach. And whether that person is 35 years old or 20 years old, connecting to the players is really about preparation and showing them that you can help them and care a great deal about them.”
That’s where this staff really had to shine this season: caring for players who risked playing through a pandemic. Kapler and his staff created a culture of responsibility when it came to following health and safety protocols. They set an example through fastidious mask-wearing. The Giants were so airtight about safety that right-hander Kevin Gausman said he didn’t want to be traded because he couldn’t be sure that a new team would take measures as seriously as his current one did.
After initial intake, the Giants only had one positive COVID-19 test all season. And it was a false positive. That’s a reflection on the coaching and training staffs, too — including head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner and protocol safety director L.J. Petra, who holstered double-barrel hand sanitizer pumps on his belt all season long.
“From Day 1, the medical staff had this place completely dialed in,” Yastrzemski said. “Without those guys, we would have had absolutely no chance. Once I saw how we were handling it from the first day, as long as we all trusted it and went by each step and each protocol, we’d be OK.”
So how should the Giants feel about Kapler’s first season? Probably this way: He put together a staff that was designed to further develop all their major-league players, rookies and veterans alike, and there was positive development on a widespread scale. That should inspire confidence that as this rebuilding effort continues, any inputs that the Giants roster receives — prospects from the farm system, trade acquisitions, free-agent signings — will be planted in fertile soil.
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“We felt Farhan and Gabe did a great job in keeping us competitive all year and getting us down literally to the last pitch of the last game,” Giants CEO Larry Baer said. “So big thumbs up in that respect, knowing we want to go further. We think the future is very bright for the organization.”
In terms of culture, Kapler sought to create an environment in which even the touchiest subjects could be discussed openly and players could feel free to express themselves. He became the first major-league manager to take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
Kapler still has a lot to prove. He has to demonstrate the observational skills and flexible thinking required to be a managerial asset when it comes to making pitching changes. He’ll have to show poise and not panic in the cauldron of a pennant race and a postseason series. He’ll have to deal with an actual, living and breathing crowd — not the cardboard kind — when it vehemently and vociferously disagrees with one of his decisions.
But Kapler’s first season was pretty good. And if he turns out to be a terrific hire, then perhaps also remember to credit the guy who did the hiring — and took more arrows than Saint Sebastian at the time.
“I thought he did a terrific job,” Zaidi said. “I had the fortunate experience of working with Boch last year and getting to know him. He’s obviously a Hall of Fame manager. It would have been a challenge for anybody to come and try to fill those shoes even with a team that was pretty well established and stable. We’ve talked a lot about how this is a team in transition. You saw that with a lot of the new players we mixed in this year. Let’s face it, we started this year without a lot of expectations for how competitive we’d be. So when you look at all those things, he did an unbelievable job.
“I mean, personally, I’m really proud of the job he did. And from a professional standpoint, I know a lot of people across the organization are really grateful to have him in this role as manager.”
(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
