(Audacy) Giants manager Gabe Kapler had a strong response Wednesday afternoon when asked about the perceived outrage from the San Diego Padres that San Francisco shortstop Mauricio Dubon bunted with his team up 11-2 in the sixth inning of a game between the two division rivals Tuesday.
While former Padres manager Jayce Tingler and current White Sox manager 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 a team should ease up as an opposing offense and to what degree it should take the foot off the gas.
"What's the threshold?" Kapler said. "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."
Kapler is in his fifth year as an MLB manager and had a 12-year playing career, and even he's in the dark on the standards of the so-called unwritten rules.
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 believes 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," Kapler told reporters. "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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