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The Giants are about to embark on a new era in 2020. The writing has been on the wall for a while now that the team was going to have to undergo some amount of rebuilding as some bad contracts and aging players does not a good combination make. This wasn’t from mismanagement, but instead just some bad luck combined with the natural cycle of things when you have a roster that was as successful as the Giants were up until the last few years.
The biggest change, however, is coming and that is in the manager’s office as Bruce Bochy retired at the end of the 2019 season. Bochy won three World Series as the manager of the Giants and compiled a 1052-1054 between 2007 and 2019 with the team while also sporting a .679 winning percentage in the playoffs as the Giants’ manager. To say that his replacement has big shoes to fill is an understatement.
However, the Giants had to fill the vacancy with someone and they have been deliberate in their search. It had been reported earlier this week that Astros bench coach Joe Espada and former Phillies manager Gabe Kapler were the frontrunners for the job with some openly speculating that it appeared that Espada was the current favorite.
That did not age well.
Gabe Kapler has been hired as manager of the San Francisco Giants, sources tell @MarlyRiveraESPN and me.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 13, 2019
The hiring of Gabe Kapler is going to be a tough spin with baseball fans and the media. One the one hand, Kapler has been highly thought of by a number of organizations including the Dodgers and Phillies over the years, so one has to think that there has to be SOME merit to all of that positive attention. He is also a guy that has embraced the use of analytics in his managerial decisions which is turning into a very important skill in today’s game.
However, Kapler’s tenure in Philadelphia did not go very well despite high expectations for the team and he, at times, looked either amateurish (trying to bring in relievers who haven’t had a chance to warm up properly, etc.) or looked like he was over-managing games to the detriment of the team in the short and long-term. It is safe to say that Giants’ fans will have a lot of bullpen moves to look forward to in the coming seasons.
The terms of Kapler’s deal are not yet known and once those details are announced, we will update you all accordingly.