Giants fire Gabe Kapler

The San Francisco Giants have relieved Gabe Kapler from his duties as manager, the team announced.

Kapler is out after nearly four seasons as Giants manager. He led San Francisco to a surprise 107-win season and an NL West title in 2021, but since then, the Giants have struggled to replicate their wildly successful campaign in ’21.

The Giants, who are 78-81 in 2023, were eliminated from postseason contention earlier this week. They began the month of September with a 52.9% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs.

As it turns out, a September collapse is what did him in.

San Francisco is 8-17 in September and quickly faded down the stretch.

Kapler, who spent two seasons as manager of the Phillies from 2018 to 2019, was fired by Phillies managing partner John Middleton just over 10 days after the end of the 2019 season. The September collapses were partly to blame for Kapler’s dismissal. The Phillies went 20-36 in the two Septembers under Kapler.

The Giants were not an easy watch this season. They essentially ran a two-man rotation and played with too many aging, unathletic veterans. The low win total reflects the talent level on the roster.

While there were complaints from players publicly and privately about Kapler’s managerial style and the way he utilized players, it’s fair to wonder if more of the blame should fall on Farhan Zaidi and the Giants front office for constructing a team that was doomed to fail.

Sounds as if the growing chorus of criticism and “noise” as one insider put it got to be too much of a distraction and there was no reason to wait and let Kapler continue to have to answer questions every day as he’d had to this week.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) September 29, 2023

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