While the focus surrounding San Francisco Giants' manager Gabe Kapler Monday was whether he would suspend his peaceful protest during the National Anthem on Memorial Day -- which he ultimately did -- it was hardly the only topic that a hoard of reporters asked about before the game in the visitor's dugout at Citizens Bank Park.
Monday wasn't the first time that Kapler has returned to Philadelphia since being fired as their manager of the 2019 season, but it was the first time that he's returned as the reigning National League Manager of the Year. And with Kapler's successor, Joe Girardi, perhaps sitting on the hottest seat of any manager in the sport, it's at least opened up a dialogue about whether the Phillies made a mistake dismissing Kapler after just two seasons.
For his part, the 46-year-old seemed to believe that his two years in Philadelphia were enough time for managing partner John Middleton to overrule then-general manager Matt Klentak and fire him.
"Yeah, I think so," Kapler said Monday when asked if he thought he received a fair shake from the Phillies.
Given that Kapler inherited a team that had six consecutive losing seasons before he arrived, didn't he need more than two years to get the team headed back towards being a consistent playoff team?
"Not necessarily. I mean, if you win a lot of baseball games, you stick around. And we didn't win enough baseball games."
In two years under Kapler, the Phillies went 161-163 (.497), but were plagued be September collapses, going 20-36 in the final month of the season between 2018 and 2019. But even though the Phillies posted the first winning season since 2011 last year under Girardi (they went 82-80), they are 131-140 (.483) in parts of three seasons under his guidance. At 27-33, the Phillies are underwater during the final month of the season with Girardi as the manager as well.
Giants' president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi scooped Kapler up as the team's manager less than five weeks after the Phillies fired him, with the two reuniting after having previously worked in the Los Angeles Dodgers' front office.
Both because he was replacing a Hall of Fame-caliber manager in Bruce Bochy and inheriting a roster that had gone 77-85 in 2019, the Giants weren't seen as an especially attractive job when Kapler was hired. But perception often isn't reality, and San Francisco has turned out to be the perfect home for Kapler. The Giants probably overachieved by posting a 29-31 record in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. In 2021, they won the most regular season games in franchise history, going 107-55 and edging out the Dodgers to win the National League West. The Giants defeated the Phillies in extra innings Monday, and are 26-21 in 2022. Meanwhile, the floundering Phillies are 21-28, seven games under .500 for the first time since 2017, the season before they hired Kapler to be their skipper.
While it's hardly been lost on Phillies fans that the Giants have outperformed the Phillies in each season since Kapler's departure, he says he's doing increasingly less looking back these days.
"Full disclosure; in year one, you kind of felt like some of that," Kapler admitted. "In 2020 with the Giants, and kind of look at what we've done and I wonder what that [Philadelphia] would be like. We're like in year three, it's just not on my radar. I don't think about it all that much. Every given day has like piles and piles of things to get to and all sorts of issues on and off the field, and it's just, there's not enough time."
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