Craig Mish of SiriusXM is reporting that the San Francisco Giants, currently in search of their next manager, are going to interview Gabe Kapler for a second time this week.
Kapler, recently fired after two disappointing years in Philly, worked under Giants President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi when both were with the Dodgers front office. Which, frankly, seems like the only real positive on his resume.
I realize we’re in the age of managers who are supposed to do the bidding of the front office so, if the front office knows and likes the managerial candidate really well like Zaidi apparently knows and likes Kapler, I get that Kapler might be a top choice. But I also don’t see anything from his time at the helm of the Phillies that suggests he’d be the best guy to manage the Giants whether they try to reload and win soon or whether they mount a major rebuild.
Kapler did not do a particularly good job with the tactical part of the gig and, at times, there was tension and dissension in the Phillies clubhouse. I’m not sure how the latter part of that translates to bringing young players along and getting them acclimated to the bigs or how the former part of that helps them edge out the competition when the games get big.
Of course, we’re all on the outside looking in on that stuff, so our insights are necessarily limited. Farhan Zaidi will, for the first time, get to hire the man he thinks is best for the job and if he thinks Kapler is the best for the job we won’t know if he was wrong about that until some point in the future.
Which is to say: managerial hires can only be made looking forward, but can only be truly assessed looking backward.