Giants Fire Gabe Kaple Giants Fire Gabe Kaple
The Giants have fired manager Gabe Kapler, according to a club announcement. After making this recommendation to ownership and receiving their approval, I met with Gabe today to inform him of our decision, reads a
Jake Noll Jersey statement from president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi. In his tenure as Giants manager, Gabe led our team through an unprecedented pandemic in 2020 and a franchise-record 107 wins and postseason berth in 2021. He has been dedicated and pa sionate in his efforts to improve the on-field performance of the San Francisco Giants and I have tremendous respect for him as a colleague and friend. On behalf of the Giants organization, we wish Gabe the best of luck in his future endeavors and thank him for his contributions over the last four years. Kapler was three games away from completing his fourth season at the helm for San Francisco. During his tenure, the team has gone 295-248 (.543), although much of that succe s came during a single winning campaign. In 2021, the Giants shocked the baseball world, going 107-55 and briefly dethroning the Dodgers atop the NL West. Kapler was named NL Manager of the Year; he subsequently signed an extension running through the 2024 campaign. However, the Giants have gone 159-162 (.495) since, failing to make playoffs in each of the past two seasons. This year has been especially disappointing, as the team was firmly entrenched in the Wild Card race until mid-September. They have now lost ten of their last 13 and were officially eliminated from contention late on Tuesday night.This marks the second time Kapler has lost his job amid similar circumstances. He was fired by the Phillies in October 2019 following two straight seasons in which Philadelphia failed to make the playoffs. In both years, the Phillies were in the Wild Card conversation until a disappointing September collapse knocked them out of the race. Not long ago, Giants chairman Greg Johnson expre sed in no uncertain terms that Zaidi and Kapler with the team in 2024. More recently, however, Zaidi made some comments on that suggested Kapler might be on the hot seat after all. When asked about Kaplers job status, the executive answered, I think we all just have to look at how we can improve acro s the board. Thats the personnel on the roster, thats our culture in the clubhouse. When youre in do-or-die games like those games in Arizona, you want them to feel different. And I think were really going to have to ask ourselves if we were prepared to sort of elevate our level of focus and play for those games that really mattered down the stretch. Evidently, the Giants do not feel as if Kaplers managerial style is conducive to a winning clubhouse atmosphere. This lines up with some recent comments from Giants ace , who told reporters on Monday (including ), We have to make some big changes in here to create that winning culture. There is little point in speculating about clubhouse atmosphere from outside, but as for the teams on-field results, Kapler cannot be held responsible for all the Giants problems. As spring training began, the PECOTA projection system from Baseball Prospectus had San Francisco pegged for an 82-win season. FanGraphs Depth Charts projected 83 wins for the Giants on Opening Day. As things currently stand, the team is on pace to finish with 79 or 80 wins, and they could still win as many as 81. Thats well within the margin of error for a projection system. Thus, while the teams performance in September has been disappointing, its hard to say they ma sively underperformed all year. In more concrete terms, its not as if Kapler had a star-studded roster to work with. After Webb and closer , the Giants dont have many impact players. , , , , , and are all solid contributors, but not exactly the players you picture at the heart of the order for a postseason club. Meanwhile, the rotation has been a sea of uncertainty behind Webb and all year long. Neverthele s, the Giants have decided to move on from Kapler, and they wasted no time in doing so. As suggests, the question of whether or not Kapler would keep his job might have become too distracting, to a point where the team saw no reason to wait until the end of the year to make a change. was the first to report that Kapler had been relieved of his duties.
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