San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler had a strong response Wednesday afternoon when asked about the perceived outrage from the San Diego Padres that shortstop Mauricio Dubon bunted with his team up 11-2 in the sixth inning of Tuesday night's game between the two division rivals.
While Jayce Tingler and Tony La Russa have publicly condemned their players for breaking unwritten rules over the past two seasons, Kapler came to the defense of Dubon.
"Everybody is competing on a Major League Baseball field. It doesn't make any sense to have one part of the field stop competing, and the other part of the field keep competing," Kapler said. "I can't think of a reason why that makes sense. The pitcher on the mound is trying to get you out. The batter at the plate stops competing with all of the tools at his disposal.
"I've never quite understood it ... I don't understand it now ... and I don't think that the best way to play this game is to take away any of your tools to be successful on a Major League Baseball field."
Kapler -- the reigning National League Manager of the Year -- would go on to note that there isn't a universally accepted threshold for when you should ease up as an opposing offense, and to what degree you should take your foot off the gas.
"What's the threshold? One team thinks it's eight runs in the sixth inning ... another team thinks that you just keep going after it as long as you're early in the game ... but there's no real cutoff point. That's a tough place to be. I don't think that there should be any of that, personally -- clearly. But at the same time, I understand that we all have different opinions and vantage points on this. And it's OK, we don't have to see this the same way."
Mind you, Kapler is in his fifth year as Major League manager, and had a 12-year playing career. Even he's in the dark on the standards of the so-called unwritten rules.
Last May, the aforementioned La Russa called rookie slugger Yermín Mercedes "clueless" after he homered on a 3-0 count with the White Sox facing Willians Astudillo, an infielder throwing less than 50 mph hour in a game where the Minnesota Twins were trailing 15-4.
La Russa's condemnation of his own player drew strong responses, including a NSFW one from former American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia, who half suggested that if teams expect players to stop trying at a certain point, perhaps a mercy rule should be put in place:
At the time, I asked Joe Girardi -- Sabathia's former manager with the New York Yankees and Kapler's successor in Philadelphia -- what he thought about the idea of a mercy rule. To my surprise, he didn't scoff at the suggestion.
“I’d probably be OK with it,” Girardi said after a chuckle. “I think it saves innings or it saves you having to throw a position player, which scares me to death. You always worry about are they going to try to do too much. I mean, you can say ‘Go out there and throw 50 mph’ and then you get a guy that’s gonna hump up or you get a line drive hit off you and you’re not used to it. I think I’d be OK with it.”
While some managers might not hate the idea of a mercy rule, the guess is that most fans -- even ones who are fine with seven-inning doubleheaders and the "ghost runner" in extra innings -- would. So that doesn't feel like a real solution to this debate.
I followed up by asking whether Girardi would have been upset if one of his players did what Mercedes did, and he declined to answer citing "generational differences with these unwritten rules." Girardi briefly played for La Russa with the St. Louis Cardinals at the end of his playing career, and probably didn't want to criticize the Hall of Fame skipper. But he went on to add that "maybe in baseball we should just specify what you’re allowed to do and not do ... maybe that would work better," perhaps an acknowledgement that he understands the outdated nature of some of the viewpoints held around the sport.
But maybe the best solution is not to have any rules -- written or unwritten -- about when you let up as a team. If some teams choose to take their foot off the gas at a certain point, so be it. But ultimately, these are the Major Leagues. Hitters, regardless of the circumstances of a specific game, shouldn't be asked to give at-bats away. If you're locked in at the plate, you should try to stay locked in. If you're not locked in, facing a position player on the mound might not be a bad way to rebuild your confidence.
And if teams take exception to players swinging for the fences, stealing bases or laying down a bunt with a big lead already in hand, Kapler says that there's a simple solution to it.
"What we've always said as a club -- and what we'll maintain -- is that if we don't want a team to bunt, we will defend the bunt. If we don't want a team to steal, we will defend the steal. If we don't want a team to swing 3-0 late in the game, we'll throw a ball, right? So we have so much control on our side that we don't have to worry about what other teams decide to do or decide not to do."
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