Gabe Kapler and the Giants Have a 13-Man Coaching Team


SAN FRANCISCO — First San Francisco Giants Last year baseball’s best had 107 wins, ending the Los Angeles Dodgers’ eight-year National League West championship streak, and seemingly genius, a crazy idea that popped up a year ago.

What if Principal Gabe Kapler asks his new boss we’re expanding the coaching staff? Did he really expand it to a total of 13 coaches? Given the seemingly impossible task of replacing Bruce Bochy, Kapler explained his vision by likening it to the importance of having a strong student-teacher ratio in school. The smaller the class size, the more benefits students receive.

“And I thought, this isn’t elementary school, this is the big leagues,” said Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ head of baseball operations.

But the more Kapler lobbied, the more it made sense.

“It was really unorthodox thinking because one or two coaches weren’t going beyond the norm,” Zaidi said. “Look, I had my doubts. ‘Are we going to have enough to do for all these people?’ I thought. But it turns out, it was a really good analogy.”

The Giants have indeed pumped their roster to 13 coaches (excluding the manager) for the 2020 season. Instead of one batting and one batting coach, they trained three each: a batting coach, batting coach/assistant batting coach, and assistant batting coach; and shooting coach, shooting director and assistant shooting coach. They listed a traditional role (row/field coach and first and third base coaches) and a non-traditional role (quality assurance coach). There was a bullfighter/receiver coach, and also two assistant coaches, one of whom was Alyssa Nakken, the first female coach in Major League Baseball.

For most of Bochy’s 13 years in piloting the Giants to three World Series titles in a five-season span, he worked with what had been standard in baseball for decades: six coaches. It was turn, kick, shot, first base, third base, and bullfighting. By its final season, 2019, the Giants had added an assistant coach and a “coach/video replay analyst” in line with the new replay rules.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but given the way the game has changed, it may well be the era of videotape recorders before the digital age.

Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

“It may be a little outside the box, but it’s increasingly inside the box,” said Larry Baer, ​​president and CEO of Giants, which brought tremendous returns by approving the increased coaching budget last summer.

Indeed, in an industry where success leads to copycats, 13 teams are listing their coaching staff in double digits this year. Cincinnati matched San Francisco with 13 coaches. Phillies, Cubs and Diamondbacks are 12 each; The Red Sox and Angels have 11.

“Teams are very mindful of the support they can provide to players, and they realize we have a lot more resources as organizations than they did 15 years ago,” said Chris Antonetti, head of baseball operations for Cleveland, where the Guardians work. eight trainers.

The subject is not Kapler’s favourite, largely because he is uncomfortable being credited for an idea that has taken root in the game. Yes, he said he could have 13 coaches, but he would prefer people to indicate that they have 107 game-winning players.

Plus, to him, the idea of ​​expanding a coaching staff is just common sense.

“You have a big group of actors and they all have different styles of communication, they all have different backgrounds, they all come from different parts of the country and different parts of the world,” Kapler said. “For us, the goal was to give everyone in our clubhouse someone they could relate to and connect with, and it is.”

The idea is to tailor the agendas to the needs of individual players and to allow communication to flow in two ways. Brandon Belt, Darin Ruf, and LaMonte Wade Jr. When they get ground balls in the first phase, they may each want to focus on a different skill on a particular day. Maybe defender Brandon Crawford wants a lighter workload, but Mauricio Dubón wants more grueling pre-game preparation. Newly hired Pedro Guerrero gives the Giants a Spanish-speaking batting coach to serve the players in the bunker during the game, eliminating the need for an interpreter.

Bench and on-court coach Kai Correa said an important philosophy is to be “co-pilot” in players’ careers, adding that he wants the Giants to be “chefs as well as consumers” in their continued development.

“We spend as much time using our ears as anything else,” Correa said.

Only three of the major coaches played – Andrew Bailey (shooting coach), Brian Bannister (shooting director) and Antoan Richardson (first base coach). Only five of the 13 players were on the coaching staff of a major league. Kapler got to know some of them during his four years as director of player development for the Dodgers from 2014-17. He knew others either from his reputation or from his colleagues’ five-star reviews and made it a point to hire them.

“He was a long time listener, it was a first time calling deal,” said assistant shooting coach JP Martinez, who was hired last year after Ethan Katz left to become the Chicago White Sox shooting coach. “I paid attention to his career, I’ve heard stories about his intensity in the lower leagues and his dedication to fitness and nutrition.”

When Kapler was successful in Philadelphia in 2018 and 2019, Martinez added: “It gives the impression that he’s making calls from spreadsheets, and one of the things he preached vigorously to Bails and me last year was not to get too locked into games. And we don’t pay attention to how we feel from the players.”

Martinez hails from the Minnesota organization, where the Twins hooked up old-school baseball guys like ex-managers Sam Perlozzo and Mike Quade with analytics experts like the organization’s shooting guru Josh Kalk.

“When I landed here, it was the perfect crossroads between the two,” Martinez said. “There’s a lot of feeling in this clubhouse.”

There are also a few faces that players, especially newcomers, should learn.

“You meet people at breakfast, lunch, coffee or something like that,” said right-handed Alex Cobb, who signed a two-year, $20 million free agency deal with the Giants this winter. “It’s not like a quick date where you walk into every room and chat for a while.”

As for the veterans of the giants, they not only adapted, but also succeeded.

Right-handed Anthony DeSclafani produced a career year last summer, finishing 13-7 with a 3.17 ERA over 31. He took curveball tips from Martinez, advice from Bannister about his change, and dived into “Bails transfer everything on the mental side of things.”

“They all had a unique experience to offer, and that’s really cool,” DeSclafani said.

Belt, a seasoned veteran entering his 12th season, said many players were skeptical of the new system at first. “But there’s someone who’s literally always there for you,” he said, “and you don’t realize how important it is until you have it.”

MLB regulations allow one manager and eight coaches in a bunker during games (when rosters expand in September, nine coaches are allowed on the clubs bench). Giant coaches not in the bunker are available in the clubhouse or behind the bunker in the indoor batting cage to assist when needed. Nakken, for example, lets potential grapples know which opposing shooters are warming up on the pitch. One of his other duties is to break down opponents’ ground ball percentages so that the Giants can place a five-man infield at the appropriate times.

Overall, Kapler likens Nakken to a traffic director who ensures that communication between coaches and between coaches and players is seamless.

“I don’t feel a lot of pressure, except that we want to be as prepared as possible every day,” she said of her breakthrough role as a Nakken woman. “So in that sense, it’s a responsibility to come in and do the job really well.”

Prior to spring training in 2020, Kapler held a two-day retreat where the entire coaching team visited attractions around San Francisco, ate, talked and bonded. This spring, the coaches attended a Bon Iver concert in Arizona.

A band that knows how to use their ears, as Correa said. Communication “isn’t always known to be a strong force in baseball,” said outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, “but knowing what’s going on gives men the peace of mind to go out and know what they need to do to be successful.”



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