Busy offseason begins with searches for field manager, general manager
SAN FRANCISCO >> The Giants’ search for Bruce Bochy’s successor has officially begun.
At an end-of-season news conference held Tuesday at Oracle Park, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi announced the club has identified two internal candidates who will be interviewed this week.
Bench coach Hensley Meulens and third-base coach Ron Wotus will be among the eight to 10 candidates the Giants will speak to about their managerial vacancy over the next month.
“They will be in to at least do a first-round interview at some point over the next week,” Zaidi said. “That’s kind of step one for us as far as this process goes.”
Meulens served as the Giants’ hitting coach from 2010-17 before transitioning into the role as the team’s bench coach. Wotus has coached in the Giants’ organization since 1991 and has interviewed for at least five other major league manager jobs during his career.
The duo will have competition from “six to eight” external candidates, according to Zaidi. If the Giants opt to hire a manager from outside the organization, it’s possible none of the coaches from Bochy’s 2019 staff will return next season.
Zaidi said he has spoken to the entire major league coaching staff and informed the coaches that they are free to pursue other opportunities. The new Giants manager will have the freedom to hire his own staff.
“The message that we’ve given them is we’re going to hold on filling out the coaching staff until we have a manager in place,” Zaidi said.
Zaidi said he will enter the interview process with an open mind, but said that previous major league experience will provide candidates with an advantage during the hiring process.
Zaidi also noted that experience as a minor league manager is an attractive quality, but admitted prior major league work provides a much higher level of expertise.
“I do think that experience is a real potential benefit especially in the short term,” Zaidi said. “Having been around some firsttime managers, I’ve seen that the learning curve can be pretty steep.”
Zaidi was heavily involved in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ manager search in 2015 , which led them to Dave Roberts, who had no prior experience as a manager but was a bench coach under Bud Black in San Diego.
Roberts won the Dodgers over with his ability to handle relationships with players, coaches and the Dodgers’ front office, and Zaidi said that relationship-building skills rank at the top of his list in desired qualities for a candidate.
“Having a relationship with the front office and being able to work with them in the modern game, having a manager that can have productive and trusting relationships in both avenues is really important,” Zaidi said.
The Giants’ search for a new manager will be conducted concurrently with a search for a general manager to join the front office and work under Zaidi. The former A’s and Dodgers executive has had an entire season to identify potential interviewees, but acknowledged he must wait until the end of the season to request permission for interviews.
In a perfect world, the timelines of the processes would allow Zaidi to bring the finalists for both jobs together to gauge their abilities to form a successful partnership before finalizing his hires.
Zaidi did not outline specific duties a new general manager would fulfill and instead noted that the person he identifies will likely be asked to maximize their personal strengths, whether that be in a scouting role, analytics work or administrative leadership.
“I don’t necessarily view it as a fixed division of labor where my job is to handle these few things and the general manager is going to handle a few others,” Zaidi said. “It’s really just about sharing the load of managing the overall operation.”
Zaidi did not specify how many candidates he planned to interview for the general manager position, but A’s assistant general manager Billy Owens has long been viewed as one of the favorites to land the job.
• It’s almost time to bid adieu to Triples Alley.
The Giants haven’t made any formal decisions to adjust the outfield dimensions of Oracle Park, but Zaidi said Tuesday the team is inching closer to finalizing plans to move the bullpens out of foul territory and into behind the fence in right-center field.
The Giants are one of three major league teams (A’s, Rays) that still have the home and visitor’s bullpens located on the field of play at their home stadium. Giants executives, coaches and players agree,
however, that the time has come for the bullpens to be moved.
Zaidi said he doesn’t expect that moving the bullpens will radically change the pitcher-friendly nature of Oracle Park, but he did mention that a byproduct of the precautionary safety measure would be a minor spike in offense.
The Giants have spent much of the year reviewing various designs that would allow the franchise to move the bullpens off the field of play. Executives have yet to finalize a decision, but it is expected the Giants will move forward with a plan that would shift the bullpens.
“I think we’ll have more detail on those in the coming days and there are still some administrative and logistical hurdles to go through as far as that’s concerned,” Zaidi said.
The 161 home runs hit in 81 games at Oracle Park this season were the fewest hit at any major league stadium this season. Since the ballpark opened in 2000, there have been 2,521 home runs hit in San Francisco, which ranks as the fewest home runs hit inside any of the 21 stadiums that have been played in continuously for the last 20 years.
The team averaged 3.34 runs per game at home this year while it averaged 5.02 runs per game on the road.
“I think from an offensive standpoint for us to identify ways to improve in this ballpark, that’s going to be a major goal,” Zaidi said.