As this season has changed so rapidly, with the Giants surging to an above-.500 record for the first time since Aug. 1 (when they beat the Rangers to go 5-4), we’ve started to become used to one of the qualities we never thought we’d see from this team. Namely, an offense that no longer makes a four-run deficit seem insurmountable. It took some time to let that sink in, but the rallies and home runs keep coming and after a while, you start to forget the recent past. Those offensive struggles of yesteryear, especially at home, no longer seem relevant in 2020.
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But something else that we saw in the Giants’ 6-5 win over the Mariners on Tuesday is occurring with the kind of regularity not many expected in late-July or early-August: Gabe Kapler seems to be making an awful lot of moves that work out perfectly, or close to it. Some are evident to anyone watching, and some are only witnessed by those in uniform.
Take Logan Webb, who looked like he might not get through two innings, let alone five. He walked two, gave up three hits, and hit Dylan Moore twice over the first two innings Tuesday night. The Giants found themselves down 5-1 and Webb, a grinder who wants nothing more than to contribute to what has suddenly become a very realistic postseason push, was beside himself. Then Kapler told him exactly what he needed to hear.
“After that second inning,” Webb said, “when I got in the dugout, Kap kind of pulled me aside and was like, ‘Hey, you’re going to go five. You’re gonna go five, maybe six. You’re gonna keep us in this game and you’re gonna get a win.'”
“In the middle of the game I had a quick chat with him after the first couple innings,” Kapler said. “I said, ‘Look, we have a chance to win this game. We need you to attack the strike zone, one pitch at a time.’ Just trying to refocus his attention. And I think he really did a good job of fighting through that tough period in the beginning and getting us through five innings. It wasn’t his best outing, but he was able to give us a chance to win the baseball game.”
Webb didn’t get the win, but he stuck around long enough for the Giants to tie the game up. His changeup, which he couldn’t command in the beginning of the game, actually became a weapon as his pitch count climbed. He got strikeouts with it in the fourth and fifth innings, and it was the first pitch he threw to the final batter he faced. The result was an inning-ending double-play. And for a pitcher who barely made it out of the second inning and certainly could’ve been pulled in the fifth after walking Kyle Seager, remembering those words of encouragement from his manager seemed to make him a little emotional.
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“That’s the worst I’ve felt like I’ve pitched in a long time and (Kapler) coming up to me and kind of patting me on the back and saying ‘we got this,’ it’s a huge thing,” Webb said. “It’s really cool to have that. And when you’ve got a manager who does that, it’s pretty special because it kind of takes the pressure off of everything else. Knowing he’s got your back and being able to go out there and just compete.”
It’s not just Webb who’s experienced this. Alex Dickerson, who was questionable for Tuesday’s game after fouling a ball off of his leg on Monday, started in left field and hit a solo homer in the third inning to trim the deficit to 5-2. Dickerson’s average has climbed to a power-packed .266, a far cry from where he was just 11 days earlier when he was hitting under .200. That was when Kapler approached Dickerson.
“He’s been amazing at it this year at picking the right times,” Dickerson said. “Right there with Webby was just one example. He did it with me when I was kind of at my lowest point, hitting .190 through a decent amount of at-bats, and (he) came up and said he still had confidence in me. He picks the right time when you need to hear it most. I think guys really respond to it.”
It was no secret at the time that Kapler believed in Dickerson; he had told reporters during that series in Arizona that he believed in Dickerson’s hitting mechanics and thought they’d soon see results. But he made sure that Dickerson knew how he felt, too.
“Right before a batting practice one day,” Dickerson said. “It wasn’t like calling me in the office or anything like that. But he had to come over and just express confidence in me, and why he keeps putting me in the 2-hole and thinks that I’m going to be a big part of the offense and had all the confidence in the world in me. It meant a lot, especially at the time. I was starting to feel a little bit better, but at the same time you’re looking around and I’m making a lot of hard outs. But you wonder if they’re even noticing that. Him mentioning that really helps you turn the corner. Especially in a year like this year, where, through setbacks, you’re kind of putting a little more stress on them than normal just because it’s only 60 games total.
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“It was a good feeling. I think that day was the day I ended up squeezing out two hits, finally. He mentioned like, ‘You’re going to have a day where you’re finally going to get those hits. Then you’re going to go off.’ And it is what happened so, yeah. Great foresight.”
Kapler himself could hardly believe how clairvoyant his in-game moves in left field ended up looking.
With the score tied at 5-5 in the seventh, he had Darin Ruf pinch-hit for Dickerson against lefty Anthony Misiewicz. Ruf crushed the third pitch he saw — a curveball on the inner half — into the left-field bleachers. Then Kapler inserted Luis Alexander Basabe, who was called up from the alternate site earlier in the day, in the eighth as a defensive replacement in left. Basabe made that move look almost as deft as the one that led to the game-winning home run, with a running catch on Phillip Ervin’s liner in the gap to end the eighth.
“That was awesome,” Dickerson said. “Especially when you make a move and the guy immediately does the best thing you can do, hits a home run. Then we made another move and Basabe got out there and ran down a ball that both me and (Ruf) probably couldn’t get. So it was awesome production in the 2-hole today.”
“It’s a lot of fun,” Kapler said. “Mainly because most of the time it’s not going to work out that way, where you’re going to get a home run from the left side and then Ruf’s going to come in and pinch-hit and hit a big home run. That just doesn’t happen that frequently. So when it does work out in your favor, you remember how often it goes the other way and you really do appreciate it. In order for that to happen, you’ve got to have Dickerson prepared for the beginning of the game and Ruf see that spot coming from a mile away, so he can be prepared for it. And he always does.”
The Giants (22-21) are currently in the No. 8 seed in the National League and hold a 1.5-game lead over the Rockies, who lost 14-5 in San Diego. FiveThirtyEight has the Giants’ postseason odds at 61 percent, with the Marlins (19-18 and currently in the No. 7 seed) at 48 percent and the Rockies at 32 percent. Those numbers could look meaningless in a couple of days, but after what we saw early in the season — the bullpen blunders and defensive miscues, in particular — it’s striking how far this team has come in such a short time.
While Kapler knows better than to crow about his own accomplishments, especially with 17 crucial games remaining, he’s finally allowing himself to enjoy the moment a little. Which is also something his team appears to be doing, as the home runs keep sailing over the walls at Oracle Park in ways we’re not quite used to.
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“Personally, I’m certainly enjoying it,” Kapler said. “I feel happy for our players when they perform well. I really like to try to put them in the best possible positions to succeed. And at the same time, I tend to stay even. It’s not necessarily about positivity or anything like that. It’s much more about: I understand that there are going to be ups, I understand that there are going to be downs. And I just feel like, just like our hitters, they’re going to be focused on the process, not on the result and on the outcome. In order for me to be a good leader, I have to do the same. So I try to keep that in mind all the time.”
Extra innings
• Mauricio Dubón watched his game-tying home run for a bit, but not because he was trying to show off. He thought his high fly ball would drift foul, but the same wind that Kapler thought knocked down a drive into the left-field corner by Wilmer Flores worked some nice magic for Dubón.
“The only way I know is because the replay was on our big board over and over,” Kapler said. “You can see Mauricio kind of willing the ball. And it was about the wind. The wind kind of was pushing balls back onto the field from the left-field line.”
• Jarlin García, whom the Giants picked up on a waiver claim back in February, looks like quite the find. After pitching a perfect eighth inning on Tuesday, he has yet to allow an earned run in 13 appearances for the Giants. The Giants now have several lefty relievers they trust, and they used three of them along with Tyler Rogers against the Mariners, culminating in Tony Watson’s second save of the season.
“I think it’s an advantage against teams who tend to struggle with left-handed pitching, for sure,” Kapler said. “The Mariners have upgraded their bats against left-handed pitching. So like when Ervin comes out to pinch-hit, he’s got a history of doing some good work against left-handed pitching. I think (Ty) France was a nice acquisition for the Mariners as well. He’s a guy who has historically done a nice job against lefties. But I do believe in the lefties in our bullpen and I like having multiple weapons to go up and down an opposition’s lineup with good quality left-handed options.”
• Brandon Belt has been hitting like Barry Bonds lately, but looked a little more like Wade Boggs on his two run-scoring singles against difficult pitches. His broken-bat looper to right that got the Giants on the board in the first inning came on a fastball on the inside corner, and then in the third, he took a sinker that was on the outside corner at the knees and grounded it the other way through a nearly vacant left side of the infield to score Donovan Solano.
Belt also made a leaping catch and tag at first on a wayward throw by Solano on Evan White’s grounder in the eighth inning. The Giants will accept an occasional Solano misfire, though — he finished a homer short of hitting for the cycle and his average is now .353, second in the NL behind Trea Turner (.359).
(Photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
Steve Berman is a staff editor and writer for The Athletic. He edits MLB content and focuses his writing on Bay Area sports, with an emphasis on local media. Before joining The Athletic he founded Bay Area Sports Guy, which became the top independent site in the region, and covered local sports for Bay Area News Group and NBC Sports Bay Area. Follow Steve on Twitter @BASportsGuy
