San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Giants’ clubhouse full of Flores fans, friends
Utilityman both produces on field and keeps everything light off it
San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler is the president of the Wilmer Flores Fan Club and he’s happy to say so.
“Yeah, you can write that,” Kapler said. “Flo’s the best. He’s prepared, relaxed, easygoing, easy to talk to. Sneaky funny.” Few of Kapler’s media sessions go without a reference to Flores, and this year, there have been even more opportunities to talk about the utility infielder. In an otherwise disappointing Giants season, Flores, 31, has quietly been the team’s most consistently productive position player and entered Saturday leading that group with 57 runs, 57 RBIs and a 1.9 WAR, per FanGraphs.
He began Saturday second on the team with 16 homers and 40 walks, and he had moved out of a platoon role, with more starts against right-handers (50) than lefties (41) this season — and he has been terrific off the bench, too, going 5-for-12 with a 1.167 OPS as a pinch-hitter.
“This is the best version of Flo we’ve ever seen,” Kapler said. “I think he’s grown a lot
Wilmer Flores has turned his teammates and coaches into fans. “He has that elite baseball makeup in the same way people talked about Buster Posey,” bench coach Kai Correa said.
“He is religious about working . ... Wilmer does not like to be unprepared.”
in the last couple years. He’s better in 3-2 counts, by way of example. Where I think before he was in more of a swinghappy mode, he’s been more patient in those counts. And he’s still one of the best at driving the baseball in the air to the pull side — he uses the part of the field where he can go deep. He’s very comfortable hitting a long foul ball to the pull side and waiting for a pitch he can hit in the gap. He’s become a much better defender, he’s moving the best he’s moved in three years, he’s getting down the line.”
Kapler, of course, is not alone in extolling Flores’ virtues. The coaching staff also loves him — and the first thing the coaches say, independently, is that Flores is the team’s hardest worker.
“He is religious about working,” bench coach Kai Correa said. “No matter what, after playing six, seven games in a row, day game after a night game, he’s out there, putting in the work. Wilmer does not like to be unprepared.”
That’s the result of Flores unexpectedly winding up at third base early in 2020 and making several errors there; he promised at the time he’d never let that happen again, “and he hasn’t, with his words and actions,” Correa said. “He takes groundballs at first base, second base, third base every day.”
This does not surprise Flores’ longtime best friend, former Mets teammate Juan Lagares, who texted from South Korea, “Wilmer is very responsible and dedicated. He just wants to be better on and off the field.”
Flores’ swing is streamlined, which is perfect for someone whose playing time ebbs and flows.
“My swing is short, and if I’m not playing every day, I make it even shorter,” Flores said. “I’m always going to have good timing because my swing
Detroit shortstop Javier Baez and Giants infielder Wilmer Flores meet at third base in a game at Oracle Park on June 28.
is short and every day I’m hitting on the field or off the machine.”
“Flo’s swing is very unique, very simple,” hitting coach Justin Viele said. “Obviously, he doesn’t pick his foot up off the ground and that just helps him see the ball, let the ball travel. He can go get the ball in front, if he feels like he needs to get to a fastball. There’s no wasted movement.
“He’s probably the hardest worker on the team. We know we’re going to see him every day in the cage, we know what he’s going to do when he gets there. I’ve never seen a more professional guy in what he goes about in game planning and the swing stuff. It’s just nonstop.”
Flores gives off such an air of supreme cool, it’s tough to imagine him even breaking a sweat. He almost glides as he moves through the clubhouse.
“He floats,” Correa said.
“He’s someone younger players and older players look to because of the way he goes about his business; it’s magnetic.” “He’s someone who anyone would like to be by his side,” Lagares said, then added a clown emoji and three rollinglaughing emoijis. “He’s super cool. But sometimes he can also be a little bit of a clown. A clown. But cool.”
Asked whether Flores might be the Giants’ coolest player, outfielder Joc Pederson confirmed that theory emphatically.
“Flo’s cool,” he said. Why is that? “Because he’s Pederson said, incredulous at a reporter’s cluelessness.
In his low-key way, Flores is nevertheless among the most fashionable players in the clubhouse, with a hip designer wardrobe that somehow looks casual and effortless. It’s not: Flores puts in a lot of time assembling his threads — and it provides him a nice mental break.
“I love nice clothes,” he said. “When I want to take my mind off baseball, I’ll go shopping.”
“Every time you see Wilmer, he’s just got back from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent or something,” Kapler said. “His fashion sense is good.”
Flores is not the only Wilmer Flores in baseball — his younger brother Wilmer, 21, is in the Tigers’ system and pitched in the Futures Game in Los Angeles last month. Within the family, their father, Wilmer, is the only one called that. The Giants’ Wilmer is Catire, a childhood nickname meaning blond, the youngest Wilmer is Chiquito. (There is an older brother named Wilmer, whose nickname is Patacon, and their oldest brother is named Ronny.)
Flores won’t take credit for his younger brother’s career, but he did get things rolling, bringing Chiquito to Arizona when Flores played for the Diamondbacks and steering him toward Arizona Western College. The 2020 draft was shortened to five rounds by the pandemic, so Chiquito signed with Detroit as a free agent. “I didn’t really help that much,” Flores demurred. “I don’t know anything about pitching.”
Flores’ unquestioned area of expertise? “Friends.” As many people know, he learned to speak English by watching the show, and his walkup music is the theme song. He loves it so much, when asked what he’s watching now, Flores looks stunned at the thought and responded, “‘Friends.’ Just ‘Friends.’ I always have it on in the background. I could be cleaning my apartment and I’m listening to it.”
When asked his favorite Friend, Flores says it’s Joey — which, perhaps, explains a bit. Like Joey, Flores loves to eat. (“Yeah, I have one cheat day a week,” Flores said. “OK, sometimes two or three.”) And like Joey, he’s unbothered by things outside his control.
“Sometimes Joey doesn’t know what’s going on around him, he’s always lost. That’s kind of how I am: I don’t want to know what’s going on around me sometimes,” Flores said with a laugh. “Sometimes I just don’t even try.”
“I can see that,” Correa said. “But Wilmer’s not dumb. He’s intuitive, he’s bright. He’s OK sometimes not knowing things he doesn’t need to know.”
Like his swing, there’s no wasted effort — Flores’ focus is going toward the things he can improve upon or needs for that night’s game.
“He has that elite baseball makeup in the same way people talked about Buster Posey, in terms of being the same guy every single day, regardless of the at-bat, regardless of the strike zone, regardless of the results,” Correa said. “Wilmer is very similar in that regard, the closest I’ve seen to Buster: He’s very popular for his consistency of personality and consistency of production. “The Wilmer Flores Fan Club is a crowded group. It’s a pretty universal sentiment.”
After three years with the Giants, Flores will be a free agent this winter and there, too, he is likely to get lots of love. There was interest in him at the MLB trade deadline, including from his former team, the Mets.
He has enjoyed his time in San Francisco, Flores said, and given how much those feelings are reciprocated by the staff, it’s hard not to imagine the team trying to make a strong push to re-sign him.
“You want to be where you feel comfortable, I wouldn’t want to leave,” he said. “But you know how it is. You never know what the future holds for you.”