Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
The circumstances were starkly different, but the end result was the same. The home fans were booing Gabe Kapler in his introduction to them.
This year, in Year Two of the Kapler regime in San Francisco but Year One involving crowds, the Giants manager received a polite bit of applause as his name was read off before first pitch. It did not reflect the love that was shown for Bruce Bochy, but there was an openness there.
The tone changed as Johnny Cueto pitched deeper and deeper in a sterling start, and Kapler went out to talk with him twice in the ninth inning. He got some boos on his walks to the mound both times, though the first changed to cheers when Cueto remained.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been booed, I promise you that,” Kapler said with a smile after the game.
The first time he was booed in Philadelphia he did not wear the same smile.
His introduction to Phillies fans as manager in 2018 came on the heels of a season-opening road trip that saw the rookie skipper pull starter Aaron Nola, who was rolling, after 5 1/3 innings and 68 pitches, only for the bullpen to blow the game.
Two games later, he went to the mound and called for reliever Hoby Milner to enter the game. Milner was not warmed up.
After a 1-4 start to his season, Kapler was introduced at Citizens Bank Park to some boos from a notoriously vocal fanbase.
How will he be greeted Monday, three years later, when the Giants open up a series in Philadelphia?
“I don’t know,” Kapler said over Zoom this weekend. “… I don’t want to say I haven’t thought about it — I have — but making that prediction … I just don’t know where to begin.”
He knew where to go Monday, walking around the City of Brotherly Love again, catching up via phone calls and texts with old friends — it’s still difficult staying away from acquaintances during the pandemic.
He improved as Philly’s manager but had dug himself a hole to begin with that he never quite escaped. He was fired after two playoff-less seasons, his final record at 161-163. The Phillies hemmed and hawed over his job status — he was left hanging for 10 days — before managing partner John Middleton, team president Andy MacPhail and GM Matt Klentak flew to California to deliver the news in person.
What could he have done to save his job?
“I think that’s pretty simple,” Kapler said. “Just winning more.”
Although he started in a hole here, too, it was from a different shovel, the reports of his mishandling an assault case while in LA following him to San Francisco. He has tried to prove his character since being hired before the 2020 season in a job that is far different than Philadelphia’s.
The Phillies, who had just imported Bryce Harper for $330 million, wanted to win immediately. Kapler, as a youthful manager, was not the well-seasoned option that Joe Girardi is.
He had come from the Dodgers, where he was farm director and valued for his helping prospects develop. The Giants are a developing organization, and the Phillies wanted to blossom immediately.
The Giants hired a different Kapler than the Phillies did. In 2018 he was eager to implement numbers-heavy strategies, which led to lifting Nola and watching the game unravel. He still values the data, but he’s learned to better value the people and the personalities. He let Cueto keep pitching (to a point) because lifting a pitcher early can mess with confidence and the rapport.
Kapler is “less certain than I was, let’s say in 2018 with the Phillies,” he said Monday, a few hours before he could wave to Phillies fans. “I think that’s a good place to be. Just kind of questioning my positions on things as much as possible and asking for as much perspective from other coaches. I think I delegate responsibility more. I trust a little bit more that things are going to be handled in an effective way. And I don’t think that my growth is done by any stretch of the imagination.”