New challenges Giants, Kapler will face this week
Kapler has managed 63 games with the San Francisco Giants, but he’s never had one of his pitchers take an at-bat.
Gabe Kapler has managed 63 games with the San Francisco Giants, but he’s never had one of his pitchers take an at-bat.
That’s changing this week as the Giants play their first three games against a revamped Padres team that took three of four from the Diamondbacks to open the season.
Playing without a designated hitter and against a loaded Padres squad presents the Giants with two new challenges, but ones that will be equally important to conquer if they hope to make a surprise run toward a playoff berth this year.
“Their rotation looks really good,” Giants reliever Jake McGee said of San Diego. “Especially after getting (Yu) Darvish and (Blake) Snell. At the end of the day, you still have to go pitch well, hit well and play defense, and I feel like if we do the little things like that, we’ll be able to compete.”
While the Giants spent the offseason hitting the free agent market to acquire Mon
day’s starter, Anthony DeSclafani, Tuesday’s starter, Aaron Sanchez, and lefthander Alex Wood, the Padres took a different approach to rebuilding their pitching staff.
San Diego general manager A.J. Preller was the most aggressive executive in the majors this winter as he swung high-profile trades for the Padres’ top three starters, Darvish, Snell and Joe Musgrove. Their additions buoyed a team that has committed more than a combined $750 million to three infielders, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer, and is now firmly viewed as a legitimate World Series contender.
“The Padres are a great baseball team,” Kapler said. “With a pretty deep and established pitching staff and some of the better younger position players in baseball, also some good mix and match options with righthanded pitching and lefthanded pitching, they’re also a well managed club.”
With 19 matchups against the Padres and 19 more against the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, the Giants will face one of the toughest schedules in the league. Their margin for error is slim, but several players cite the club’s depth as a reason for optimism ahead of their first divisional matchups.
“I think we have a really solid team, a lot of power all around,” DeSclafani said. “Just from watching the offense, no one gives at-bats away and I think that’s really huge in the game. Coming from a pitcher, when you have a guy that’s just going to battle every single at-bat, it just gets tiring.”
One of the ways the Giants can take advantage of their depth will come with timely substitutions, particularly in the late innings. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi acknowledged last year that Kapler had one of the more difficult jobs of any manager in the majors because the club’s roster required a lot of “active management,” meaning there were several moving pieces and challenging decisions to make in an effort to create favorable matchup advantages.
Eliminating the designated hitter in the National League should make Kapler’s job tougher this year as he’ll need to weigh the risk and reward of removing starting pitchers in favor of pinch-hitters when the Giants are chasing runs in the middle innings.
In his brief tenure as the Giants’ manager, Kapler’s offensive substitutions have often worked in his team’s favor as San Francisco’s pinch-hitters posted a .917 OPS in 60 at-bats last year. The Giants’ OPS in pinchhit situation was the highest mark in the majors by more than 100 points and their eight extra-base hits and 12 walks also led the league, but decisions should be more complicated in 2021.
Instead of simply subbing in a left-handed hitting outfielder for a righthanded hitting outfielder to gain a platoon advantage as Kapler did when Alex Dickerson homered in place of Austin Slater on Thursday in Seattle, the Giants’ manager will have a lot more on his mind. Double-switching, asking players to move positions defensively and removing veteran position players earlier in games for matchup purposes may all become more common now that the Giants are returning to a National League style of play, and each decision Kapler makes in close games will be viewed under a microscope.