Mark Hallberg

The Giants interviewed third-base coach Mark Hallberg this week in regards to the manager’s job, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports.  Hallberg becomes the first candidate known to officially sit down for an interview, though several other internal candidates are also on the radar.  Bench coach and interim manager Kai Correa and longtime former third base coach Ron Wotus are expected to receive interviews, Slusser writes, and catching/bullpen coach Craig Albernaz could also be considered.  Albernaz has already been interviewed by the Guardians in regards to their own managerial vacancy.

Hallberg, however, “is emerging as the top in-house candidate” to replace the fired Gabe Kapler, Slusser notes.  The 37-year-old Hallberg has been part of San Francisco’s coaching staff for the last four seasons, moving from an assistant coach role to taking over from Wotus as third base coach prior to the 2022 campaign.  After playing five seasons in the Diamondbacks’ minor league system from 2007-11, Hallberg moved on to coaching at the high school level, and then for four seasons in the Cape Cod League.  He joined the Giants organization as a coach of their former lower-A affiliate in Salem-Keizer in 2018, and then managed the club in 2019.

If the Giants did hire Hallberg, he would be the club’s first (non-interim) first-time MLB manager since Dusty Baker got the job in 1993, though Baker obviously had a larger breadth of Major League experience from his long playing career and his coaching career before moving into the manager’s chair.  Considering the increasing impatience from Giants fans to see the team get back on the winning track, Hallberg would immediately face a lot of pressure, though Slusser notes that it could be a popular hire within the team since Hallberg is “well regarded by everyone in the organization.”

Correa and Wotus aren’t surprising names on the list of possibilities, and this would be the second time Wotus has interviewed for the manager’s job — the Giants spoke with Wotus during the 2019-20 offseason prior to hiring Kapler.  Wotus has spent the last 35 seasons in the San Francisco organization as a minor league player, then as a manager in the minor league system, and then an extended coaching stint that lasted from 1998-2021.  Nineteen of those seasons on staff were served as a bench coach, with Wotus acting as the right-hand man for managers Baker, Felipe Alou, and Bruce Bochy.  The 62-year-old Wotus has worked as an advisor within the Giants organization for the last two seasons.

President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said he hoped to have the team’s new manager hired before the free agent period fully opens, which occurs five days after the end of the World Series.  There haven’t been many public reports about external candidates who may or may not be of interest to the Giants or have spoken to the club already, but Slusser reports that Rangers bench coach Donnie Ecker “is expected to be among the potential front-runners” as San Francisco’s next manager.

Ecker is a familiar face in the Bay Area, having worked as a hitting coach with the Giants in 2020-21.  Other teams with managerial vacancies (the Guardians, Mets, and Angels) might also have interest in speaking with Ecker, though the Rangers’ increasingly deep playoff run is a complication, as any interviews would have to be built into breaks in the postseason schedule.