Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler “will both be here next year” according to Giants owner Greg Johnson, but are their futures necessarily tied together?
Zaidi was asked if he views himself and Kapler, whom Zaidi hired in 2020, as a “package deal” when he joined Copes & Dieter on Thursday.
“I think with any GM, when you hire a manager, there’s some joint responsibility there,” Zaidi said. “I don’t know whether the two of us view ourselves as a package deal — whether it’s in baseball or socially or anything like that — but there’s joint responsibility.
“I look at Gabe’s time here, he’s got one of the top winning percentages of any manager in Giants history. I think he’s in the top-10. He’s obviously won Manager of the Year, and I think you look at this season, we started 6-13, we bounced back from that. We had a really rough August and this home stand helped right the ship. I don’t think a team can go through those struggles and come out the other side the way we have a couple times this season without strong leadership. So that’s about a strong endorsement I can give for the job he’s done.”
While all of that is true, the Zaidi-Kapler tenure could easily be framed in a less positive light. Since regime began in 2020, the Giants have made the playoffs once and have been unable to land a marquee player in free agency. They are in the wild-card hunt right now, but had a disappointing offseason that dovetailed into another campaign flirting with .500. Making things worse, the offseason was prefaced by strong statements from Zaidi about the importance of adding top-tier talent. The players brought in during free agency have largely floundered.
Perhaps worst of all is the attendance issues. San Francisco has fallen to 17th in MLB this year. The fans are uninspired.
Zaidi acknowledged on KNBR that the team is not where they expect to be.
“And again, we don’t aspire to be a team that’s scrapping and clawing to get into the playoffs,” Zaidi said. “That’s the reality this year. There’s an aspiration for us to be better, certainly, but we’ve been a consistently competitive team under his watch. And I think we all appreciate that in terms of the job he’s done.”
For now, Zaidi and Kapler have enough rope to turn things around next season. Beyond that, Zaidi wouldn’t say much about Kapler’s contract situation.
“He’s obviously under contract through next year,” Zaidi said. “So, as we go through, you know, whether it’s internal employees or Kap himself, I’m sure that’ll come up. Not trying to punt on the question, but we’ve got a number of employees whose contracts are up this year — that’s always the priority.”
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