Giants’ Gabe Kapler, Mets’ Buck Showalter Pay the Price for Underachieving Teams

Two years ago, the Giants won 107 games, and Gabe Kapler was voted NL Manager of the Year. Last year, the Mets won 101 games, and Buck Showalter was voted NL Manager of the Year. But both teams were bounced out of the postseason in their first playoff series nonetheless, and with both teams struggling to return to such heights thereafter, the two managers lost their jobs this past weekend after their teams asked in effect, “What have you won for me lately?” The Giants fired Kapler on Friday with the team holding a 78–81 record; the Mets (then 74–86) announced before Sunday’s finale that they were moving on from Showalter.

Kapler and Showalter were the first two managers to lose their jobs in 2023, but not the last, as the Angels decided to move on from Phil Nevin, who was in the last year of his contract, on Monday after a 73–89 finish. The Padres and Yankees haven’t officially confirmed the status of their incumbents, but Bob Melvin and Aaron Boone remain under contract through next season, with the Yankees holding an option on Boone for 2025 as well.

Of the two dismissals, the more surprising is that of Kapler, particularly because on September 14, owner Greg Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle that the manager and president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi “will both be here next year.” Zaidi praised Kapler at that time, saying, “Gabe’s done a great job navigating us through some challenges this season… No one’s satisfied to be only a few games over .500, but we’re playing meaningful baseball and are in position to make the playoffs with 16 games left, and Gabe’s steadiness and leadership has been critical in getting us to this point.”

The Giants were 75–71 at the time, one of four teams within half a game of the third Wild Card spot, but from there San Francisco went just 3–10 before Kapler’s dismissal, which came a day after Zaidi spoke to KNBR radio about a lack of intensity in the clubhouse. “When you’re in do-or-die games… you want them to feel different,” Zaidi said. “And I think we’re really going to have to ask ourselves if we were prepared to elevate our level of focus and play for those games that really mattered down the stretch.” Via the team’s press release, Zaidi recommended Kapler’s firing to ownership, a reversal of course that suggested he did it to save his own job.

Kapler spent four years at the helm of the Giants after two middling years managing the Phillies. Not only was he tasked with replacing Bruce Bochy, who retired after a 13-season, three-championship run, but he also joined a franchise amid a more substantial transition, as Brian Sabean stepped aside after 22 years as general manager (1997–2014) and executive vice president (2015–18). The team hired Zaidi away from the Dodgers, and while he interviewed longtime Bochy lieutenants Hensley Meulens and Ron Wotus for the managerial job, instead he chose Kapler, who served as the Dodgers’ director of player development from 2015 to ’17, during Zaidi’s tenure as GM.

Under Kapler, the Giants went just 29–31 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season but rocketed to 107 wins in ’21, as free agents Kevin Gausman, Anthony DeSclafani, and Alex Wood, trade acquisition LaMonte Wade Jr., and championship-era holdovers Buster Posey (who opted out of playing in 2020), Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford turned in excellent seasons. The Giants set a franchise record for wins and also broke the Dodgers’ streak of eight straight division titles before their 106-win rivals ousted them in a tight five-game Division Series.

Between Posey’s sudden retirement, a slew of injuries, and the regression monster, the Giants slipped to 81–81 in 2022. They swung big this past offseason, nearly landing Aaron Judge via free agency before he agreed to return to the Yankees, then agreeing to a 12-year deal with Carlos Correa, only to call it off due to medical concerns (the Mets similarly stepped away from a subsequent 12-year-deal with Correa). Zaidi ended up making a handful of smaller deals, signing five players (Mitch Haniger, Michael Conforto, Sean Manaea, Taylor Rogers, and Ross Stripling) to multi-year contracts worth at least $25 million total, but together that group produced just 2.0 WAR for $72.5 million (37% of the team’s $196-million payroll) in 2023.

After stumbling to an 11–16 start, the Giants went 35–20 over the next two months and pulled to within 1.5 games of the division-leading Dodgers just after the All-Star break. Despite going 12–13 in July, they were 58–49 at the trade deadline, occupying the top NL Wild Card spot; even with a 12–15 August, they entered September 70–64, one game ahead of the Diamondbacks and 1.5 ahead of the Reds for the third Wild Card spot. But by then it was clear that the offense was sputtering. In an August 22 article, I noted that they had hit for an unfathomable 74 wRC+ (.215/.291/.341) from June 1 through August 21, and that was before they began September by going 0–6 and scoring 14 runs. They loitered around the race for another week before the aforementioned skid and lost two of three to the Dodgers under bench coach/interim manager Kai Correa to finish 79–83, their fifth sub-.500 finish in seven seasons.

Kapler was sometimes viewed as the stereotypical button-pushing manager doing the bidding of an analytically-driven front office — is there a more cliched stamp to put on a 21st-century skipper? — but he only had so much to work with. This was a stars-and-scrubs roster without stars, but with endless mixing and matching necessary to counter players’ weaknesses. While eight Giants reached double digits in homers, only Wilmer Flores hit more than 23, only he and Wade produced a wRC+ higher than 112, and only Thairo Estrada topped 2.8 WAR. Crawford was dreadful in perhaps his final major league season, Conforto managed just a 100 wRC+ after missing all of 2022 due to a shoulder injury, and Haniger wasn’t really himself even before missing two and a half months after an errant pitch on fractured his right forearm, requiring surgery. Pressed into duty by injuries, rookies Luis Matos and Casey Schmitt were overwhelmed by big league pitching, and Patrick Bailey wore down after a promising start in which he leapfrogged Joey Bart as the catcher of the present. The team hit for just a 93 wRC+ (11th in the NL), ranked dead last in slugging percentage (.383) and stolen bases (57), and scored just 4.16 runs per game (14th).

The shorthandedness extended to the pitching side, where injuries to Wood, Stripling, DeSclafani, and Alex Cobb left the Giants using openers all over the place. The trio of Logan Webb, Cobb, and DeSclafani averaged nearly six innings per turn over about half the team’s starts, but 10 others combined to average just over three frames per start:

The Giants’ 47 starts of three innings or less and 66 of four innings or less both led the majors, 14 more than the second-ranked teams (the Rays and A’s, respectively). More than anything, it was tedious, prompting Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci to grouch about the team’s “gig-economy approach” to its roster. “[I]f this is the future of baseball, I want no part of it…. The Giants are a well-managed success more than they are an aesthetic one.”

But Verducci misread Kapler’s mad scramble to stay afloat, which on the offensive side included the majors’ most pinch-hitters used and the sixth-highest platoon percentage, as a stylistic preference. This was Zaidi’s roster, and at the deadline he augmented that limited lineup and threadbare rotation by… trading for AJ Pollock, who sported a 51 wRC+ and was on the IL due to a hamstring strain; he went 0-for-6 and was released.

To these eyes, that paltry support says it all about the fault for this mess. Kapler may not be the second coming of John McGraw, but did what he could with an imperfect roster, got no help from above at the season’s most critical juncture, and ended up under the bus. “I know I have to think about things differently,” said a chastened Zaidi in the wake of Kapler’s firing. “I know we as an organization have to do things differently. And a lot of those things are difficult, starting with the move today.”

Zaidi is aiming to have a manager in place by the time free agency starts and is planning to “cast a wide net” in his search. Some segment of the fan base would love to see Posey take over, but he’s now part of the Giants’ ownership group and unlikely to seek the job given the pull of his young family. Wotus, now a special assistant, and third base coach Mark Hallberg, who has minor league managerial experience, could be in the mix. So could Melvin, if he and the Padres split. Stephen Vogt, who played for the team as recently as 2019, and Will Venable, who interviewed last time and is now a coach for the Rangers, have been mentioned frequently elsewhere.

The Mets’ managerial change is more straightforward. In September, owner Steve Cohen hired David Stearns to become the team’s president of baseball operations, something he was previously prevented from doing because Stearns was still under contract in the same capacity for the Brewers and, even after stepping down from that post a year ago, remained as an advisor. This is now his show; it’s his prerogative to choose a manager to work with, and he prefers a clean slate. “This isn’t really specific to Buck,” he explained during Monday’s introductory press conference. He and Cohen discussed “my belief that coming in from the outside, it would be beneficial to me and ultimately to the organization to have someone start at the beginning of this journey with me to make sure that we’re aligned at the outset — to make sure that we’re ready to move forward for a long time together.”

Thus another spin of a revolving door that began when Terry Collins resigned at the end of the 2017 season. Since then, the Mets have burned through four managers, with Mickey Callaway, Luis Rojas, and Showalter each lasting two seasons, and Carlos Beltrán resigning before he could even manage a game due to fallout from the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Only Showalter piloted the Mets to the playoffs; his 101-win season was the highest total of his 22-year managerial career and the team’s highest total since 1986. Unfortunately, the 101-win Braves claimed the division title on the basis of a 10–9 season series advantage and sent the Mets to the best-of-three Wild Card Series, where they were upset by the Padres.

Cohen responsed by opening his wallet. During the exclusive negotiating period, the Mets re-signed closer Edwin Díaz to a record-setting five-year, $102 million deal. Even while losing Jacob deGrom to the Rangers and failing to finalize the Correa deal, the team committed well over half a billion dollars in future salaries by retaining Díaz and fellow free agents Brandon Nimmo and Adam Ottavino and adding Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, José Quintana, David Robertson, and Omar Narváez as well. The result was the most expensive team in history, with a $346 million payroll according to RosterResource, and $359 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes — not including a tax bill in the neighborhood of $100 million.

The pricey squad projected for 90 wins with a 77% chance of making the playoffs even after a disastrous spring during which Díaz tore the patellar tendon in his right knee in a World Baseball Classic celebration, Quintana was sidelined by a fractured rib caused by a benign lesion, and Verlander strained his teres major. The team was never close to whole, particularly on the pitching side, but the Mets bolted from the gate with a 14–7 record nonetheless. Even that only brought them within half a game of the division-leading Braves, and the bottom soon dropped out. From April 22 though the end of June, New York went 22–39. Showalter could call only so many closed-door meetings to stop losing streaks.

When even a strong July (14–9) couldn’t get the Mets back to .500, Cohen gave general manager Billy Eppler a mandate to sell at the deadline, with leeway to eat huge chunks of salary in order to improve the returns in trade. Away went Max Scherzer (whose aches, injuries, ejection and sticky-stuff suspension limited him to 11.1 innings from April 10 through May 21, just as things were falling apart) along with Verlander, Robertson, Mark Canha, and Tommy Pham, plus at least $70 million just to cover the remaining guarantees of the two future Hall of Fame hurlers.

Eppler restocked the farm system with what Eric Longenhagen gauged as four of the top 10 prospects dealt at the trade deadline, but Showalter and company were left to play out the string with a depleted rotation and lineup. The rookie campaigns of Senga and catcher Francisco Alvarez, a 31-homer, 31-steal season from Francisco Lindor, a 46-homer season from Pete Alonso, and a strong year from Nimmo were all bright spots. But even Lindor and Alonso struggled in the first half, when the season might have been salvaged, and players such as Jeff McNeil, the perpetually banged-up Starling Marte and Carlos Carrasco, and rookie Brett Baty never really got going.

Showalter could only fix so much, but he may have allowed things to get too lax. According to a postmortem by The Athletic’s Tim Britton and Will Sammon, Pham told Lindor, “Out of all the teams I played on, this is the least-hardest working group of position players I’ve ever played with,” though Lindor, Alonso, and Nimmo were apparently not the targets of his criticism.

In the end, the regime change made the decision to move on to a new manager almost automatic. Stearns used the same “wide net” phrase as Zaidi regarding his search, adding that it could take awhile because some potential candidates are involved with postseason teams. Notably, Brewers manager Craig Counsell, whom Stearns hired and who has since piloted the Brewers to three NL Central titles and five postseason appearances, is on an expiring contract. Melvin, Astros bench coach Joe Espada (who interviewed when the Mets hired Showalter), Pirates bench coach Don Kelly, and Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough are among the names floated by multiple outlets.

The demises of both Kapler and Showalter are eternal reminders not only that managers only control so much, but they’re the vulnerable ones when circumstances change at the executive level. As a newcomer to New York, Stearns has the advantage of a fresh start, but the next shakeup in San Francisco may mean it’s Zaidi on the firing line.