Manager Gabe Kapler of the San Francisco Giants argues with home plate umpire Chad Whitson after Whitson called a strike on Wade Meckler in the fourth inning of their game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Oracle Park on Aug. 15, 2023, in San Francisco.
Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe San Francisco Giants announced that they have dismissed manager Gabe Kapler after four seasons on the job. Bench coach Kai Correa will take over for the final series of the season against the Dodgers this weekend.
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The writing had been on the wall since the Giants’ infamous second-half season collapse. At one point, San Francisco had been at the top of the National League Wild Card standings this season, standing 12 games above .500 on Aug. 4. Going from those highs to lows featuring failure after failure at all levels of the game, and an eventual elimination from making the postseason, would cause any organization to consider wide-scale change.
It would also be one thing if it were just a rough stretch at the end of the summer — the Giants are a whopping 8-17 in September after starting the month with a six-game losing streak — but a story from The Athletic brought questions about clubhouse culture. As reporter Andrew Baggarly wrote Tuesday, the Giants’ roster was filled with “too many ho-hum reactions to losing along with a near-zealotry to Pusoy, a Filipino card game that Joc Pederson and some other Giants players appear to find more compelling than studying the night’s opposing starting pitcher.”
“As a group, as a team, we played our worst baseball when it mattered the most,” Zaidi told reporters Friday after firing Kapler. “I know you guys have been working on figuring why that happened, and there’s a lot of questions for fans on why that happened. We have a lot of work to figure out why that happened. But, for us, we figured step one was making this change.”
In his four seasons with the Giants, Kapler led the team to a 295-248 record (.543) and one postseason appearance. He shocked the baseball world in 2021 when he turned San Francisco into the most dominant team in baseball, with a 107-55 record, but that ultimately sputtered out into a first-round exit against the Los Angeles Dodgers. He clearly never found the key to regaining that type of magical season again.
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This breaking news story has been updated.