So who should get fired for this crap?
Let's tackle the big questions
At the end of July, the Giants were 58-49. Sure, it hadn’t been a great month — they went just 12-13 as the offense struggled mightily with runners in scoring position — but the team still had the fourth best record in the National League, had the second wild card spot, and was just 2.5 games back of the first place Dodgers.
The Giants were worse in August, going 12-15, but even still, at the end of play on August 31, they had a 70-64 record and owned the third wild card spot. Sure, there had been some rough patches, but they won 4 out of their last 5 on the month and were ready to start September strong.
The 2023 San Francisco Giants did not start September strong.
After a 6-game losing streak to start the month, the Giants won 5 out of 6, and then lost 8 out of their next 10, essentially eliminating any chance they had to make the playoffs. It was, if not an unexpected collapse — the team had been playing very badly for a while, after all — certainly a devastating and total one. The team had been hanging around in contention through the grace of its competitors also being fuck-ups; once they became marginally competent, the Giants had no chance and they wilted.
Normally, someone gets fired for this.
It’s not a reflection of my beliefs to say that, but instead it’s how things have been in baseball for decades. When a contending team falls apart in September, ownership decides it’s someone’s fault, and that person needs to not be a team employee anymore. Maybe it’s the GM, maybe it’s the manager, maybe it’s Greg from Accounting — what the fuck, Greg, maybe work the goddamn count every once in a while instead of swinging at the first pitch you see, asshole — but a head has to roll simply to that a head will be seen rolling, if nothing else.
Obviously, the two firing possibilities who have inspired the most passion from the Giants fanbase are Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler. Some want them both gone, and for the franchise to have a completely fresh start. Some think Kapler has done what he can with the roster Zaidi has given him, and that Zaidi is the one to blame. Some think that the coaching staff has failed to improve the players the way they needed to, and so they should all be gone, including Kapler. And some think that the real problem is that ownership hamstrung Zaidi by never allowing him to fully tear down the team and rebuild, and so there’s a lot of wheel spinning the team’s going to have to go through before coming out the other side, so getting rid of either man would be premature.
So who’s right? I think we can all agree on one thing: it’s my job to definitively settle this debate over the next few hundred words and everyone will agree with my conclusion.
We’ll start with Zaidi. Zaidi was hired after the 2018 season to modernize the team’s approach to everything, from analytics to player development to Not Employing Bobby Evans. In all three, he succeeded, taking the Giants from a backwards organization living in the past to one that utilizes the latest and most up-to-date dumpster diving technology.
The farm system has turned around too, and that’s what Zaidi is looking to hang his hat on. Just a few years ago, it was completely bereft of impact talent at the upper levels, and now the organization has graduated player after player to the majors this season. Now, that talent hasn’t turned the 2023 season around, but with players like Patrick Bailey, Marco Luciano, and Kyle Harrison, you can see a strong foundation for 2024 and beyond. That’s a credit to the work done by Zaidi and the people he’s hired.
But, uh, he also can’t sign free agents for shit.
Yes, Alex Cobb has done a nice job, and the team is reasonably good at the reclamation project pitchers they sign to short deals. But the free agent hitters Zaidi has signed as important pieces of the team have ranged from mild disappointments (Michael Conforto) to outright disasters (Tommy La Stella).
On the pitching side, Alex Wood and Anthony DeSclafani were good in 2021, and have been significantly less good since. Ross Stripling has been awful this year. Sean Manaea started out awful and has only recently rounded into form as a starter, just in time to opt out of 2024. Kevin Gausman was great for two years, and now he’s still great, but in Toronto. Carlos Rodon was great for a year, and now he’s not great with the Yankees. Drew Pomeranz was awful as a starter, but a few relief appearances meant the team could flip him for Mauricio Dubon, who sure would have been useful to have this year instead of Brett Wisely, but oh well. With all the smart people using fancy spreadsheets or whatever they use, the team has still been pretty bad at predicting who would be good or not good.
They’ve compensated by using platoons. Lots of platoons. Platoonmania is running wild in San Francisco. The fact that this is the best solution the team has is on Zaidi. The execution, though … is also probably on Zaidi, but Kapler is the fall guy for it.
Because Kapler and Zaidi work together. They work closely, come up with a plan for the game, and then it’s on Kapler to execute it. And the execution has not been fun to watch. The platoons aren’t making the offense viable. Young players are regressing after a couple weeks in the majors, and not adjusting to the league. Most of the bullpen seems to have fallen apart over the last month (not you, Junis. You are seen and you are valid).
So Kapler is not pushing the right buttons. The question becomes, are those buttons that he even has? I’m sure he would love to mash the cheat code that puts nine Bryces Harper in the lineup, but that doesn’t seem to exist, so all he can do is start Luis Matos against a lefty and then pinch hit with Michael Conforto when a righty comes in. Sure, that’s not actually good for Matos’s confidence or development, and it’s not making the team succeed either, but it is making the team moderately less bad than they would otherwise be.
How much of this is Kapler’s fault, then? I would say not that much. Now, it’s possible that he needs to go anyway, as a way of clearing the vibes from a clubhouse that’s seen more losing over the last couple of years than they would prefer, but all accounts are that the vibes in the clubhouse are mostly okay, and any problems in there don’t come from Kapler. He believes in letting players run their own clubhouse, and they appreciate that.
No, it’s not working. But it’s not really clear what Kapler could personally do to make it work. He’s making statistically sound decisions with the data he has, which is what his boss wants him to do. Not to say that the team definitely shouldn’t get rid of him, but if they did, you have to imagine it would be as a package deal with Farhan getting the boot too.
Greg Johnson has gone on record as saying both Zaidi and Kapler will be back next year, by the way, but that was several weeks ago and it’s possible that the team’s poor pay since then might change his mind. I doubt it! But I bet it’s not as off the table as that quote might indicate.
The question becomes about Farhan Zaidi and only Farhan Zaidi, then. Because he has flaws. We are seeing them in the construction of this team’s roster. The bet on Conforto has been a push, mostly. The bet on Mitch Haniger has not paid off. If the team had signed Carlos Correa like they wanted to, that wouldn’t be going so great either.
And yet, with all that, he did the most important thing, didn’t he? He rebuilt the farm system to start producing usable major league players, and ones who will possibly be much better than that. Casey Schmitt sure had an awful several months in the majors, but that doesn’t mean you can close the book on him. Wade Meckler had a tough time and Luis Matos has been very up-and-down, but that doesn’t mean they’re done. There is probably one good big leaguer among those three, and possibly another one. If I’m right (never a guarantee!), that’s a success story, and an important one.
So I think it’s reasonable to give Zaidi and Kapler one more year. Let’s see the firepower of this fully armed and operational farm system. Let’s see if they can get that dodgeresque pipeline working. Let’s see if they can make it work. I know that Boston fired Chaim Bloom and now there’s blood in the water, but who are the Giants going to get next year who would be better? The system might have worked here. But we won’t know unless we wait.
So who gets fired? In conclusion, I dunno. I guess they’ll can some hitting coaches or something. Hire some new coaches to replace a few of the ones you can’t name anyway. Call it a day and hope.
Wait.
Call it a day and hope?
CALL IT A DAY AND HOPE?
That’s a terrible idea! Okay, so going over possibilities to replace Farhan…
While I have been a fairly solid Zaidi fanboy, I have questions about whether he knows how to handle stars. As the Dodgers GM, he took a good team and made it perpetually great. But, if I recall correctly, he came in after the Adrian Gonzalez trade and left before the Mookie Betts trade. His term was similarly in between both Kershaw signings. Mostly his moves have been good in isolation team improving moves, which are great, but unless I’m missing something, there doesn’t seem to be a real team defining move for either the Giants or Dodgers. (I’m probably missing something.)
So, what we’re left with is a lot of good depth piece style players. The Giants have 10 offensive players with 0.8 WAR or better. The same can be said of the Braves, the Rays, and the Orioles, while the Dodgers only have 8 such players. Admittedly, noting that the Giants don’t have stars may have been done a few times before. But, I think there is more to it than that. They seem to get flawed players who aren’t expected to have 500 PA (only 3 on the roster, and those 3 just are barely over 500 PA), but the Giants are hoping their depth is there to overcome a single player’s inability to avoid injury or hit lefthanded pitching or just stay fresh during a grueling schedule. With the third wildcard, this mostly works, and it worked really well in 2021 when everything seemed to go right. However, over the last two seasons, we’ve seen multiple players at the same position get injured at the same time. I’ve previously noted about them losing Estrada and Crawford simultaneously. And, similarly simultaneous injuries occurred in the outfield too. Even a deep team, like the Giants, is going to struggle with simultaneous injuries. It forces the manager, who wants to platoon, to play players who clearly weren’t meant to play in certain conditions (see Casey Schmitt and Luis Matos for example).
My hope is that the FO thinks hard about this over the offseason. Having a lot of depth is cool, but it just doesn’t appear that they have enough depth to overcome an entire roster full of players who are going to have fewer than 500 PA.
Also, they should sign Shohei Ohtani.
Bring back Righetti.
Then fire him.
Problem solved!