Gabe Kapler

Marlins Parting Ways With Assistant GMs Oz Ocampo, Dan Greenlee

By Anthony Franco | August 12, 2024 at 10:01pm CDT

The Marlins informed assistant general managers Dan Greenlee and Oz Ocampo that their contracts will not be renewed in 2025, report Barry Jackson and Craig Mish of the Miami Herald. The front office changes go beyond the AGM ranks. ESPN’s Alden González reports that the Fish are overhauling a lot of their player development department and are parting ways with international scouting director Roman Ocumarez.

It’s common for new baseball operations leaders to replace a lot of their top personnel fairly early in their tenure. Miami hired president of baseball operations Peter Bendix last November. Shortly before Bendix’s hiring, former GM Kim Ng declined her end of a mutual option after owner Bruce Sherman informed her the team was planning to hire a baseball ops president (thereby dropping Ng to second in the front office hierarchy).

Greenlee and Ocampo predated Bendix in the Miami front office. The Fish hired Greenlee back in 2017 and promoted him to AGM at the end of the 2020 campaign, just before they tabbed Ng to run baseball operations. Ocampo was an Ng hire, joining the organization over the 2022-23 offseason after spending time with the Astros and Pirates in international scouting.

The Marlins operated with four assistant GMs this season. They don’t actually have a general manager following Ng’s departure. Brian Chattin has been a part of the organization for more than a quarter century and has held an AGM title for nine seasons. Bendix surprisingly tabbed former Giants manager Gabe Kapler as an assistant GM last December. Jackson and Mish report that Chattin is expected to remain with the organization.

Both The Miami Herald and ESPN write that Kapler is expected to continue serving as an assistant GM next season as well. That should end any speculation about Kapler potentially making the jump back to the manager’s office in Miami. The Fish are generally expected to part ways with second-year manager Skip Schumaker at season’s end. While Schumaker won the Senior Circuit’s Manager of the Year award in his first season, the Marlins agreed to void a 2025 club option on his contract last winter after the manager reportedly voiced his displeasure with the organization’s handling of Ng’s situation.

It’s entirely possible that Bendix would have put his stamp on the front office regardless of how the team performed in 2024. The way the team played immediately solidified that they were headed for an organizational overhaul. Bendix oversaw a quiet first offseason from a player personnel perspective. The Fish never seemed strong believers that they’d repeat last year’s surprising playoff berth.

An 0-9 start tanked their season from the beginning and the Marlins pulled the trigger on a Luis Arraez trade just six weeks into the season. They followed up with trades of Jazz Chisholm Jr., Bryan De La Cruz, Josh Bell, Trevor Rogers and most players of note from their bullpen (e.g. Tanner Scott, A.J. Puk, Huascar Brazoban). Were it not for a brutal stretch of injury luck in the rotation, they’d probably have dealt Jesús Luzardo and potentially Braxton Garrett or Ryan Weathers as well.

It’s yet another full rebuild in Miami, one that’ll certainly continue into next offseason and quite likely the ’25 trade deadline. There are likely to be more changes throughout the roster, coaching staff and potentially in the front office as they try to turn the page on one of the worst seasons in franchise history.

Marlins To Hire Gabe Kapler As Assistant General Manager

By Steve Adams | December 1, 2023 at 9:27am CDT

The Marlins have reached an agreement to hire former Phillies and Giants manager Gabe Kapler as an assistant general manager under new president of baseball operations Peter Bendix, reports Craig Mish of SportsGrid and the Miami Herald. San Francisco dismissed Kapler following the 2023 season, hiring future Hall of Famer Bob Melvin in his place. Mish adds that Kapler has been looking for a new challenge in baseball operations since being let go by the Giants and was also in the running to become the Red Sox’ head of baseball operations before they ultimately hired another former big leaguer, Craig Breslow.

This won’t be the first foray into baseball operations for Kapler, who served as the Dodgers’ farm director prior to being named manager of the Phillies. He’s spent the past six seasons as a manager, compiling a 456-411 record between San Francisco (2020-23) and Philadelphia (2018-19) and won NL Manager of the Year honors in 2021. He’ll now return to the other side of the game, with a primary focus on player development within the Marlins’ system, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The Marlins don’t have a general manager, with the aforementioned Bendix holding the title of president and heading up baseball ops. But Kapler will join Oz Ocampo, Brian Chattin and Daniel Greenlee as the team’s fourth executive to hold the title of assistant GM.

It’s not the only recent baseball ops hire made by Bendix, who replaced GM Kim Ng after she declined her end of a 2024 mutual option (reportedly because ownership wanted to hire a president of baseball ops to overtake her on the front office hierarchy). Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reported earlier this week that Miami hired now-former Rangers assistant director of baseball operations Vinesh Kanthan as their new director of baseball operations.

Changes in the Miami front office figure to continue over the next year, as it’s common for newly hired baseball operations executives to bring in their own team — at times at the expense of holdovers within the department. Bendix and his staff will look to build on the success of the 2023 club, which reached the playoffs for the first time (in 162-game season) since the organization’s 2003 World Series-winning season.

Red Sox Interview Gabe Kapler In GM Search; Kim Ng Declines Interview

By Nick Deeds | October 20, 2023 at 12:11pm CDT

12:11pm: Cotillo and Sean McAdam of MassLive have now reported that Ng has declined to interview for Boston’s baseball operations vacancy, despite what the pair describe as strong interest in Ng from the Red Sox. Ng’s reasons for declining the interview are not yet known.

11:45am: In their ongoing search for Chaim Bloom’s replacement as head of baseball operations in Boston, the Red Sox have interviewed another external candidate, per Alex Speier of the Boston Globe: former Phillies and Giants manager Gabe Kapler.

Kapler, 48, is something of an unorthodox candidate to take the top baseball operations job for the Red Sox. Though he has previous front office experience as director of player development for the Dodgers from 2014-2017, most of his baseball experience has come on the field and in the dugout; he was a player in the major leagues for six different teams across twelve seasons before serving as manager of the Phillies from 2018-2019 before being replaced by Joe Girardi. From there, he was promptly hired to replace Bruce Bochy in San Francisco, and managed there for four seasons before being fired just before the end of the 2023 campaign.

That being said, Kapler has plenty of ties to Boston. His major league playing career saw him play parts of four seasons for the Red Sox, including 136 games during the club’s curse-breaking 2004 season that saw them win the World Series for the first time since 1918. After initially retiring following the 2006 season, Kapler took a job as the manager of Boston’s High-A affiliate in Greenville for the 2007 season before making a comeback as a big league player from 2008-2010.

What’s more, Kapler is a fairly well-respected and decorated big league manager. Though his teams have made the postseason just once during his six seasons in the dugout, his teams have never significantly under-performed preseason expectations, and during his Giants tenure the club typically outperformed their projections. Most notable of those over-performances, of course, was San Francisco’s 107-win 2021 campaign that saw Kapler win the NL Manager of the Year award in a nearly unanimous vote. PECOTA’s projections that season gave San Francisco a projected win total of just 75, while Fangraphs projected the club to win 76. The club also outperformed it’s projections in 2020 and 2022, though not to the same staggering degree as in 2021.

Kapler is hardly the only external candidate the Red Sox are currently discussing, as Cubs assistant GM Craig Breslow, Twins GM Thad Levine, and former Pirates GM Neal Huntington are among the other candidates that have interviewed for the top job in Boston, along with internal candidates such as assistant GMs Eddie Romero and Paul Groopman. Per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo, Kapler is reportedly something of a long shot to ultimately land the top job in Boston. Speier previously described Breslow as a “leading candidate” for the position as the club heads into the next phase of their search.

Cotillo adds that Kapler is believed to be interested in both on-field and front office roles as he seeks his next job after departing San Francisco. Though he’s seemingly only interviewed to run the baseball operations department in Boston at this point, there’s certainly nothing preventing Kapler from returning to the Red Sox organization in another capacity should the club decide to go in another direction for their top job.

The Red Sox have seen a number of high-profile candidates decline to interview for the position, including former Astros GM James Click and former Marlins president Michael Hill. Another high profile candidate who has been rumored for the position is former Marlins GM Kim Ng, who recently declined her end of a mutual option with Miami after ownership decided to pick up their side of the option rather than offer Ng an extension while looking to hire a president of baseball operations above her. While her departure from Miami seemingly opened the door to her joining the Red Sox, Cotillo cautions that multiple sources recently “threw cold water” on the idea of Ng matching up with Boston.

Giants Fire Gabe Kapler

By Leo Morgenstern | September 29, 2023 at 10:12pm CDT

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 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 passionate 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 success 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 expressed in no uncertain terms that Zaidi and Kapler would both be back with the team in 2024. More recently, however, Zaidi made some comments on KNBR radio that suggested Kapler might be on the hot seat after all.

When asked about Kapler’s job status, the executive answered, “I think we all just have to look at how we can improve across the board. That’s the personnel on the roster, that’s our culture in the clubhouse. … When you’re in do-or-die games like those games in Arizona, you want them to feel different. And I think we’re 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 Kapler’s managerial style is conducive to a winning clubhouse atmosphere. This lines up with some recent comments from Giants ace Logan Webb, who told reporters on Monday (including Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News), “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 team’s 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. That’s well within the margin of error for a projection system. Thus, while the team’s performance in September has been disappointing, it’s hard to say they massively underperformed all year.

In more concrete terms, it’s not as if Kapler had a star-studded roster to work with. After Webb and closer Camilo Doval, the Giants don’t have many impact players. LaMonte Wade Jr., Mike Yastrzemski, Wilmer Flores, Joc Pederson, Thairo Estrada, and Michael Conforto 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 Alex Cobb all year long.

Nevertheless, the Giants have decided to move on from Kapler, and they wasted no time in doing so. As Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle 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.

Susan Slusser was the first to report that Kapler had been relieved of his duties.

NL West Notes: Machado, Smith, Giants

By Mark Polishuk | September 23, 2023 at 9:21am CDT

Right elbow surgery seems to be in the cards for Manny Machado, and the star third baseman shed a bit more light on his injury situation when speaking with The Athletic’s Dennis Lin and other reporters Friday. According to his doctors, Machado said he’ll need 5-7 months of recovery time before he is able to both hit and field, meaning he’ll be limited in some capacity heading into Spring Training and potentially for the start of the Padres’ 2024 season. This timeline is still pretty fluid since the nature of Machado’s surgery (for lateral epicondylitis or “tennis elbow”) is very rare among baseball players and among athletes in general, yet the procedure seems like the best method of correcting Machado’s longstanding injury. Since Machado hits and throws from the right side, the elbow issue is keeping him from properly throwing, though he can still manage to hit, albeit with discomfort.

Rookies Eguy Rosario and Matthew Batten have been handling third base while Machado has been limited to DH duty for the last three weeks, and it seems possible the Padres will look for some infield help (whether a short-term veteran third baseman or a more versatile utility type) this winter as a fill-in while Machado recovers. The good news is that Machado has been adjusting well to a designated hitter role, hitting .302/.343/.571 with five home runs over 67 September plate appearances. This includes four hits and two homers in yesterday’s 4-2 win over the Cardinals, which extended San Diego’s winning streak to eight games. With the Padres still in the wild card picture, Machado has said he’ll try to keep playing through the pain unless the club is mathematically eliminated from the playoff race.

Giants’ Chairman: Zaidi/Kapler Will Return In 2024

By Anthony Franco | September 14, 2023 at 11:15pm CDT

Giants chairman Greg Johnson has gone on record a few times to express his support for the club’s baseball operations leadership. He reiterated that sentiment this evening, telling Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and manager Gabe Kapler “will both be (in San Francisco) next year.”

It has been a streaky season for the Giants, who remain right on the edge of contention with two and a half weeks to go. San Francisco sits at 75-71, percentage points above the Diamondbacks and Reds for the last Wild Card spot in the National League. The Giants had gotten as high as 13 games above .500 shortly after the All-Star Break but are just 26-30 in the second half overall. That knocked them out of the playoff picture for a bit, though a recent 5-1 stretch coinciding with cold spells for a few teams above them has put the Giants back in a solid spot.

They’re looking for what would be the second playoff appearance of the Zaidi/Kapler era. Zaidi has been running baseball operations since the 2018-19 offseason; Kapler took over as skipper one year later. They stepped into a transitional period before a shocking 107-win campaign to snap the Dodgers’ streak of NL West titles with one of the best years in franchise history. L.A. vanquished the Giants in the Division Series, and San Francisco has been an average team since that point. They were exactly .500 last year and aren’t far above that mark this season.

San Francisco tried for an impact acquisition last offseason. Their pursuit of Aaron Judge came up short, while the Carlos Correa physical led that agreement to fall through. The Correa saga came after most of the other top free agents were off the board, leading San Francisco to pivot to the volume approach that has defined most of their past few winters. Signings of Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling have all yielded middling results in their first seasons, though the addition of Taylor Rogers has mostly worked as anticipated.

The leadership’s track record goes well beyond this past offseason, of course. Prior acquisitions of Thairo Estrada, J.D. Davis and LaMonte Wade Jr. have all been strong low-cost additions. Wilmer Flores has provided four years of quality production since signing in free agency headed into 2020. They’ve felt the effects of missing out on a star position player — particularly as the offense has gone cold in the second half — though the lack of long-term payroll commitments could embolden them to make legitimate runs at Shohei Ohtani or Cody Bellinger this offseason.

Both Zaidi and Kapler are believed to be under contract for next year. Kapler signed an extension running through the ’24 campaign following their standout 2021 season (in which he was named NL Manager of the Year). Zaidi’s contract was a five-year guarantee that spanned through this year, though it also included a team option for the ’24 season. Slusser characterizes that provision more as a team opt-out clause which the organization bypassed when it was available to them a few months ago. Regardless of the specifics, it’s clear both Zaidi and Kapler will return — though they’d each enter the season in lame duck status unless they sign longer-term extensions over the winter.

Quick Hits: Carpenter, Managers, Thome

By Anthony Franco | February 24, 2022 at 9:58pm CDT

Longtime Cardinals infielder Matt Carpenter hit free agency at the end of the season when the team made the easy decision to decline their $18.5MM option on his services for 2022. The three-time All-Star and former Silver Slugger Award winner had fallen on hard times over the past few seasons. After a .257/.374/.523 showing that earned him down-ballot MVP support in 2018, Carpenter has hit only .203/.325/.346 over 910 plate appearances in the last three years.

Having recently turned 36 years old and reached the end of his contract, Carpenter could’ve thought about stepping away from the game. But he’s maintained that he has no plans to retire, and he recently detailed a series of changes he’s made to his offseason routine in a chat with Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. Carpenter connected with Reds star first baseman Joey Votto, who enjoyed an excellent 2021 season at age-37 after a pair of relatively down years. The lefty-hitting Carpenter praised Votto’s straightforwardness and candidly told Rosenthal “If he would have told me, ‘I think you’ve peaked. I think this is it,’ honestly, I probably would have retired. But he said, ‘I think you do have a lot left. I think you’ve kind of lost your way a little bit.’”

Carpenter suggested he’s embraced some different methods of training, increasing the intensity of his batting practice sessions and pairing with bat manufacturer Marucci to take a data-driven approach to his choice of bat. Carpenter also worked with private hitting instructor Craig Wallenbrock and former teammate Matt Holliday — now an assistant coach at Oklahoma State University — in an effort to rediscover his hitting mechanics. Given his age and recent struggles, Carpenter will have to settle for a minor league or low-base MLB deal whenever transactions again begin, but he tells Rosenthal he’s “more confident about where I’m at and where my swing is than I have been in years, maybe ever.” The piece is worth a read in full for those interested in Carpenter’s process and the mentality both he and Votto have taken in their pursuit of remaining productive as they get into their mid-late 30’s.

Some more odds and ends from around the game:

As the amount of data available to and used by teams has exploded in recent years, managers have found themselves with different complexities than they’d faced in the past. Fabian Ardaya, Cody Stavenhagen and Will Sammon of the Athletic recently examined the job description facing modern skippers, who are often tasked with weighing countervailing opinions among front office analysts, players and assistant coaches. Giants manager Gabe Kapler — who has had plenty of success in San Francisco but had been fired after two seasons (2018-19) leading the Phillies — tells the Athletic scribes he feels he wasn’t always perceptive enough of the flow of the game early in his career. “In 2018, I came in with a game plan and tried to fit the game into that game plan at times,” Kapler said. “And I think more and more I’m just sort of watching and experiencing the game in real-time, being present in real-time and noting more things about what’s happening in the dugout, what’s happening with our coaching staff, things like facial expressions with our players and body language on the field.” Ardaya, Stavenhagen and Sammon also chat with Angels skipper Joe Maddon, new Mets manager Buck Showalter, and various front office personnel about the challenges inherent to managing as part of a broader look at the position.
The Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association announced yesterday that Jim Thome has been hired as their next president. He takes over for fellow Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, who had worked in that role since 1989. The MLBPAA, a nonprofit organization of over 8,600 current and former big leaguers, has a stated goal of “(promoting) the game of baseball, (raising) money for charity, (inspiring) and (educating) youth through positive sport images and (protecting) the dignity of the game.” “With what Brooks has done with his honesty, integrity, and leadership skills for the MLBPAA, I am very fortunate that I will be able to lean on him as well and ask him questions,” Thome said as part of the press release announcing the news. “To be the president is a great honor and it’s very humbling.“

Coaching Notes: Giants, Nationals

By TC Zencka | December 4, 2021 at 8:04am CDT

Let’s kick off this Saturday morning by checking in on the latest happenings around the game…

The Giants are adding Jacob Cruz to manager Gabe Kapler’s coaching staff. Cruz will be an assistant hitting coach for the 2022 season, per Robert Murray of FanSided. Cruz returns to the organization that drafted him in the first round as an outfielder back in 1994. He was an assistant hitting coach with the Brewers for the past two seasons, the Pirates, Cubs, and Diamondbacks before that. Cruz joins assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero, hitting coach Justin Viele, and director of hitting Dustin Lind as offensive coaches on Kapler’s staff.
Managers and coaches are not included in the hiring freeze brought on by the lockout, so coaching hires should continue to roll in. The Nationals are one organization that figures to be relatively active in filling out their coaching staff and development teams. The Nats have seen a number of their front office staff leave over the past year. They’re also looking to fill the position of minor league hitting coordinator, writes Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post.

Gabe Kapler, Kevin Cash Named Managers Of The Year

By Anthony Franco | November 16, 2021 at 6:54pm CDT

The Baseball Writers Association of America announced the results of Manager of the Year balloting this evening. Giants’ skipper Gabe Kapler was named the National League winner, while Rays’ manager Kevin Cash claimed his second consecutive win in the American League.

Kapler and Cash managed the best regular season team in the respective leagues. With balloting conducted before the start of the playoffs, voters are left to judge solely on clubs’ regular season bodies of work. In addition to posting their respective league’s best records, both San Francisco and Tampa Bay finished second in run differential (behind the Dodgers and Astros, respectively).

The Giants’ magical season was unexpected. While most preseason projections figured the Dodgers and Padres would battle for the NL West crown, San Francisco shockingly won a franchise-best 107 games to claim the top seed. That came with an aging core of position players on a team that had gone just 29-31 in 2020, making it all the more impressive that the Giants were able to consistently play at an elite level all year long. The team rewarded Kapler with a two-year contract extension last week.

Manager of the Year awards frequently come to skippers whose teams outperform expectations, so it’s little surprise Kapler fared well in the balloting. He appeared on 29 of 30 ballots, garnering 28 first-place votes and one second-place finish. The other first-place votes went to Craig Counsell of the Brewers and Mike Shildt, who was nevertheless dismissed by the Cardinals after the season. Counsell and Shildt finished second and third, respectively, while the Braves’ Brian Snitker and Dodgers’ Dave Roberts also picked up some down-ballot support.

While the Giants’ great season was unexpected, the Rays’ success shouldn’t have come as much surprise. Tampa Bay also had the AL’s best record in 2020, a season in which they claimed their second pennant. That said, the Rays enter each season in a loaded AL East that includes the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays, each of whom have significantly higher payrolls.

Nevertheless, the Rays continue to churn out talented players and leverage match-ups to great success. Tampa Bay has posted a winning record in four consecutive seasons, and the club has a cumulative 554-478 mark (.537 winning percentage) since Cash took the helm in 2015. That run of consistent success contributes to Cash becoming the first back-to-back Manager of the Year winner since Bobby Cox in 2004-05.

Cash’s hold on the balloting wasn’t quite as resounding as Kapler’s. The Rays’ skipper appeared on 28 of 30 sheets, garnering 19 first-place votes. Scott Servais of the Mariners (five), Charlie Montoyo of the Blue Jays (three), Dusty Baker of the Astros (two) and Alex Cora of the Red Sox (one) each garnered at least one first-place nod themselves, with Servais and Baker joining Cash as finalists. In addition to that group of five, the White Sox’s Tony La Russa and the Tigers’ A.J. Hinch garnered some down-ballot support.

See full balloting in each league.

Giants Sign Manager Gabe Kapler To Contract Extension

By Anthony Franco | November 12, 2021 at 4:25pm CDT

The Giants have signed manager Gabe Kapler to a contract extension that runs through the end of the 2024 season, the club announced. His original deal ran through next year, so the sides are extending their relationship by an additional two years.

It’s no surprise the San Francisco front office kicked off the offseason by hammering out an extension with their skipper. It’s fairly common for teams to avoid heading into the season with a manager in the final year of his contract — if for no other reason than to ward off speculation about their long-term future.

Of course, no one would’ve expected Kapler’s job to be in any jeopardy anyways. Signed to replace Bruce Bochy over the 2019-20 offseason, Kapler led the club to a roughly average showing in his first season. The Giants went 29-31 during the 2020 truncated schedule, finishing just outside an expanded playoff field. If anything, that roughly .500 showing looked to be an optimistic expectation heading into 2021. FanGraphs’ preseason projections gave the Giants just a 5.7% chance of reaching the playoffs, while Baseball Prospectus forecasted them at 75-87 with less than a 1% shot of winning a loaded NL West.

Instead, the Giants played one of the best seasons in the history of the more than century-old franchise. No other Giants’ team had won more than the 107 regular games claimed by this year’s squad, while their .660 winning percentage was the organization’s fifth-highest mark since 1900 (and highest since moving to San Francisco in 1958). The Giants led all teams in wins, narrowly holding off the Dodgers to claim an improbable division crown.

The team didn’t have the postseason success they no doubt desired, dropping a tight five-game Division Series against their archrivals from L.A. The front office surely isn’t holding the vagaries of a five-game sample against Kapler, though, and today’s extension reflects that.

It’s always hard to apportion credit or blame for a team’s success to a manager from the outside. Giants’ players no doubt deserve plenty of acclaim, with Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt and Evan Longoria playing as well as ever despite being into their mid-30s. That group has been effusive in their praise for the front office and Kapler’s coaching staff in helping orchestrate their turnarounds, though. Kapler and his staff also drew plaudits for their leveraging of San Francisco’s role players, with previously unheralded performers like Darin Ruf and LaMonte Wade Jr. thriving in platoon capacities.

The Giants’ marvelous campaign has massively raised expectations for the franchise heading into 2022. Facing the potential free agent departures of four-fifths of their primary rotation, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and his front office have plenty of work to do this offseason. They’ve checked off one box early, keeping Kapler in the Bay Area for what they hope to be another few great seasons.

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