Giants New Leadership Triumvirate: Zaidi, Harris, Kapler

With the announcement of Gabe Kapler as the next SF Giants manager (3-year contract), and the announcement just the other day of Scott Harris as the new GM of the Giants, the future leadership of the Giants has been finally set by Farhan Zaidi, President of Baseball Operations.  In addition, it was noted that Brian Sabean will continue in his role as advisor and resource for the front office.

ogc big picture thoughts

I was very excited about the hiring of Farhan Zaidi.  He's a smart guy from a great school (Go Bears!), with one foot in analytics and academics, and another foot in the real world messiness, as he focused his early baseball career on learning scouting from the ground up.  He also seemed to have a really high E.Q. (Emotional Quotient), from all the interviews I've seen him give, a down to Earth type of guy, quick to the self-deprecating quip, very likable.  He appeared to be a unicorn able to blend both objective and subjective, intellect and emotional.

Harris Is a Good Choice

I like the hiring of Scott Harris.  While he grew up as a Cubs fan (split household: his brother grew up Giants fan, as each parent claimed one child, apparently, to be fans of the same team), he's a Bay Area guy (so might be here for the long term), smart (Northwestern MBA and UCLA Econ), ambitious (wrote letters to every team in the majors, looking for a connection; he eventually met Al Rosen through a relative, I believe his mom or grandma, essentially not taking no for an answer, and arranging for Scott to have lunch, leading to a long mentoring relationship until Al passed away, Rosen helped him get his first baseball internship with the Nats), and brings IP from the Cubs and Red Sox through his work experience over the past half decade, working under Theo Epstein as Assistant GM.

He will be Zaidi's Bobby Evans, the administrator who can handle most of the business administration stuff that needs to get done, freeing Zaidi to focus more on the strategic aspects of the job.  Plus, Harris will be doing other projects, much like his work on research and development for the Cubs, as he expands his expertise and experiences.  He might stay here a while, because of family, but I have to think his ambition is to get to Zaidi's level, President of Baseball Operations, and he will be pursuing experience in the other aspects of baseball ops to round out his resume, I would presume.  Hopefully he can last a while.

In Harris's press conference, he noted the appeal of his role being flexible and nebulous, where Zaidi and he would have no set roles, per se, but would blend together and work cooperatively to make decisions (though I would say that Zaidi clearly has the last say in anything).  That's an evolution on the policies that Sabean had when he was GM, for while each person had their role and duties, they were also encouraged to help with and learn other roles.  Colletti spoke about this a number of times, extolling Sabean's openness to allowing this.

Kapler:  Not That Good

My knee jerk reaction to Gabe Kapler hiring is one of bewilderment.  Apparently he did not report alleged sexual assaults (three of them, to boot) when he was with the Dodgers, and instead (inexplicably) tried to mediate one of them.  Zaidi also apologized for not doing the right thing, so he was involved as well, which now makes me question his EQ.

Though I must add that while mistakes were made (which he and Zaidi admitted to in the press conference; looking at their faces, looked grim when usually this is a happy and light affair), he was not aware of the sexual assault charges later brought up, even though both the girl and the grandmother e-mailed him numerous times regarding the assault (where two girls beat her up, because she barfed on a bed, while the Dodger players videoed the beating), and he worked with the Dodger's legal council on how to handle this situation.  This is a key fact that is being mis-stated by some of the people complaining about the hiring.

And while he tried to mediate this (bad move), he at least was respecting the wishes of the girl and grandmother when he did not report the assault, as they asked him not to.  Those women later did report the assault to the police, and added the sexual assault as well.  Kapler was unaware of any of that until the Washington Post article came out, so he was blindsided by it, and felt he had to write on his blog what happened from his point of view.

In addition, his 2019 Phillies severely underperformed.  Some gave him the benefit of the doubt because of injuries, but if one is going to do that, they should also have given Bochy the benefit of the doubt as well, because of the injuries.   Some point to his Pythagorean, noting that it was positive both seasons he managed.  That is a good sign, but given all the turmoil he created in his roster with his unorthodox moves, one can also say that he probably should have performed even better with his Pythagorean, we don't know how much his hitters and pitchers underperformed because of his mistakes in handling people. 

It don't capture other things, like, for example, Bochy was rated among the Top 30 managers in history because he was stellar in getting more out of his hitters than other teams did, that value won't show up in Pythagorean.  Or how well he handled the bullpen (Kapler apparently called for a reliever to come in who was not even warmed up yet).  I'm not saying there isn't anything positive about Kapler's management with the Phillies, one would hope he was good at something since Zaidi just hired him, but there is enough mistakes and poor performances that his managerial prowess is in question.

To be fair, I've not read up on everything, though I've read the Washington Post article and an article that quoted much of his personal blog post on the incident, as well as the Giants beat reports after the hiring.  But just the bare headline details, along with his lackluster performance managing the Phillies are enough for me to question this move to hire Kapler.  Zaidi just moved in all his chips with this bet, it's all or nothing now.

Zaidi Got His Man

Clearly, Zaidi got his man.  Previously, Kapler was expected by many to be the next Dodgers manager but was beat out by Roberts.  This hiring appears to mean that Zaidi apparently disagreed with that decision by Friedman, because if he agreed that Roberts is better than Kapler, why would he hire someone who he would consider to be a lesser manager than the one currently managing our arch rival?  So, Kapler was the guy Zaidi preferred all along.  And the Phillies owner delivered him to us by firing him over the objections of their baseball operations staff.

This is Zaidi's Matt Williams moment where the large mass of the Giants fan base think he's an idiot for making this move.  I won't go that far, but it's like many Giants management decisions in the past where I disagreed but acknowledge that they know more than I do about the situation:  they better get this decision right.

Player Development:  Back to the Future

One strong reason, that Zaidi noted in Kapler's press conference for the hiring, is Kapler's role as head of player development previously with the Dodgers.  He noted the need for player development even at the major league level, and that Kapler's experience and expertise will be valuable in a major league manager's role.

For all the talk about analytics and bringing the Giants into the 21st Century of baseball, that this is a major reason for hiring Kapler just makes me laugh because this is something Earl Weaver was extolling in his book on managing baseball, long ago, and which he was doing over 50 years ago with the Orioles.   (FYI, I recommend reading the book if you love baseball)

He talked about the need to bring along new major leaguers slowly, as he felt that each player has to make a huge adjustment to major league life.  He noted the importance of building player confidence (something Kapler stated that he screwed up with; and which Zaidi was not encouraging with his rapid action player acquisition method of acquiring players) by putting the player into situations where he can succeed.  This is going deep back to the future, pulling up Earl's old managing strategies.

Shift to Analytics Need to be Tempered

This demonstrates my worry about the Giants hurried push into analytics and the new age.  One problem that has stymied corporations today is how to successfully implement change management.  It is one thing to try and improve methodologies, it is another to get buy in from the workers who have to implement it.  Many firms have screwed up this process and got bad results.  That appears to be what has happened with the Phillies and all the changes Kapler tried to institute.  His inexperience just added to the difficulties in his implementing what he felt was good policies based on analysis.

Furthermore, the analytics have to ask the right questions and be used in the right context.  For example, the Dodger's usage of Rich Hill has been very rigid and formulaic:  right around 18-20 batters into the game, he's taken out.  I get doing that in the regular season:  he's had a history of injuries, as well as the general rule that pitchers' performance tend to go down once they face hitters the third time in the game.

But in the playoffs, as the Nats showed this off-season (or Bumgarner in 2014), you need your best pitchers to face as many additional batters as they can handle.  It's do or die, and you can rest in the off-season.  So you need coaches who can tell when Rich Hill is starting to tire or starting to be ineffective, and not go to the formulas and analytics every time, in order to keep him out there as long as he can handle it that night.  Because it's the playoffs, and you have to manage differently for the situation.

That's something Bochy knew.  Like Zaidi extolled about experienced managers learning from failure, Bochy learned from his failure with the Padres in the World Series, and applied his learning with the Giants, bringing in starting pitchers as relievers as he deemed necessary, leaving players off the playoff roster who he doesn't believe can add more value (like when Zito was left out of the 2010 playoffs), benching players as necessary in the playoffs (like sitting Sandoval in 2010 to start Renteria in the World Series).

He understood the need to win each game, on it's own, and worrying about the next game when it is time to play that game.  Bochy didn't need to be the player's buddy, as Dusty did to the bitter end, starting Livan over Rueter.  No, Bochy left Zito off the playoff roster in 2010, as well as replacing Rowand as a starter with Torres during the 2010 season, and made Lincecum a reliever in 2012, for a few good examples.  In short series, you need to focus on winning each game, as momentum shifts quickly with each win or loss.

Zaidi seems to understand that there are two sides, the objective and the subjective, but I'm not sure if he's been able to balance the two properly yet, given incidences like the disgruntled players about his waiver wire on steroids strategy.  Hopefully he is learning from his mistakes on the fly here, as well.  And that he's asking the right questions.  I'm hopeful, as he's a smart guy, but we'll see, a lot of smart people make mistakes too (and keep on making them).  Hopefully he's different.