SF Giants: Gabe Kapler's firing gives fans one answer and more questions

Farhan Zaidi and SF Giants ownership made Gabe Kapler the casualty of an underwhelming 2023 season. Where do they go from here?

There was one question that lingered in the air after the SF Giants announced Gabe Kapler's firing on Friday. Whose fault was it? Perhaps Kapler was a scapegoat for the team's mediocrity, but there's no avoiding it when your team goes from 13 games above .500 to unceremoniously eliminated by a team that couldn't make the playoffs with Fernando Tatís Jr. and Manny Machado. There's something very wrong with this organization, and at the very least, it's clear that Kapler couldn't fix it. If the Giants are going to get better, it won't be behind him.

That clarity at least offers a view to a path back towards relevance. While the hands-off approach that Kapler employed with a 2021 team full of veteran leaders like Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt led to great success, it doesn't work when your biggest average annual salary goes to Joc Pederson. To get a mercenary squad to embrace a championship ethos, more gravitas is needed from the next skipper. Get someone who can make the biggest stars want to play for him, who can teach the rookies what championship-caliber preparation is like, and maybe the Giants can get this sinking ship going somewhere.

Then again, maybe it can't. The Giants' highest-paid players this season were Pederson, Michael Conforto, Brandon Crawford, and Alex Wood. Those four players were worth a combined 2.4 WAR this year, or approximately one 2023 Wilmer Flores. Who was great, don't get me wrong. I just wouldn't pay him more than $66 million next season if I were an MLB general manager. Sorry, Wilmer.

This was a team set up to fail. I don't want to harp too much on the stats, but San Francisco hit .220 as a team after the All-Star Break. That's 2,300 at-bats of one of the least-watchable offenses you've ever seen, 30 points worse than the post-break 2009 "balsa wood bats" squad. Oh, and this year's team also had exactly two starters last the entire season. It's no wonder they were less effective when their rotation didn't know if they'd be on the roster three days out, let alone pitching. 

That is, if you'll indulge the pessimism, the greatest fear here. Kapler has done a fine job of managing an unorthodox pitching staff throughout his time in San Francisco, and that hasn't changed this year. Was there something he was supposed to say to get J.D. Davis to stop swinging through fastballs down the middle? If the Giants are subtracting from one of their few actual areas of strength because the rest of their game is so obvious and structurally flawed, things could get really, really ugly over the next year or two.

Still, I don't think there's much point in shouting "Doomsday!" just yet. For everything Kapler did right, there's plenty of criticism for his handling of a team with decent bones. Maybe the rotation would have looked awful by committing to five everyday starters at the beginning of the year, but then again, maybe we would have figured out that Sean Manaea was alright a little sooner. Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers were anchors in the bullpen, but they were not protected well in the second half. And, of course, everything wrong with the offensive system can be neatly summed up by Mark Matthias pinch-hitting for Brandon Crawford in the 9th inning of a tie ballgame. 

And the defense. Oh, the defense. If there's one thing that a manager can and should take responsibility for, it's the prevalence of unforced mental errors. A year after they placed fourth in the majors with 100 errors, they backed that up with 117 more in 2023. The Giants need to clean up their self-inflicted wounds, and a new leader in the dugout could help. 

Let's say, then, that the Giants do bring someone on board capable of fixing all that. Someone who can lead a team with camaraderie and teamwork, who makes deft bullpen and pinch-hit decisions without sacrificing the team's morale, who can ride with the hot hand and let guys earn their spot. What then? Who's to say that the organization can build a roster worthy of that skipper? Would you bet on Shohei Ohtani coming to the Bay? What about the Giants turning Luis Matos into Corbin Carroll, or Marco Luciano into Gunnar Henderson?

Make no mistake, that's the gap the Giants have yet to fill. They'll need Kyle Harrison to blossom into a star and a repeat season from Cobb and Manaea. They'll need a Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford from Patrick Bailey and Casey Schmitt, or else they're always going to be stuck playing second-fiddle to LA. And maybe, maybe, general improvements across the board combined with calculated upgrades and a solidified bench get the Giants back into the 90-win realm. But the front office has had three realistic shots at it, and they've gone 1 for 3. That's not a passing grade, even if it is a slash line of .333/.333/.333. 

There are simply too many questions to bet that finding a new manager is the cure for what ails the Giants. It's still impossible to tell who needs to stay and who needs to go for this team to return to its glory days. But there will be more pain, more cuts. Maybe Mike Yastrzemski, Austin Slater, and Mitch Haniger all need to go to make room for new stars. Maybe everyone in the rotation besides Logan Webb isn't good enough, and a Kyle Harrison trade makes headlines for a week. Maybe Farhan Zaidi can't run a perpetual contender by himself, and SF Giants fans will have to wait another half-decade for another winning season. Who knows? But at least they're not running it back.