San Francisco Giants team president Farhan Zaidi met with the news media in the Giants dugout at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Tue Oct 3, 2023. Zaidi talked about the changes and what’s ahead for the 2024 Giants. (San Francisco Chronicle photo)
By Stephen Ruderman
SAN FRANCISCO–Giants President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi held his end-of-the-season press conference following the end of a disappointing 79-83 2023 Season.
Today was the beginning of the 2023 Major League Baseball Postseason, which the Giants will not be participating in. It is the second year in a row, and the sixth time in the last seven years that the Giants stayed home in October. It was also their fifth losing season in the last seven years.
“Our goal is to never have these kinds of press conferences. We should be in the playoffs every year,” Zaidi bluntly stated.
The quote perfectly set the tone for this press conference.
Following an improbable 107-win season and National League West division title in 2021, the Giants finished right at .500 at 81-81 in 2022. It was a tremendous setback for the organization, which believed they were going to compete every year after 2021.
The Giants responded last winter by signing Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea, Ross Stripling and Luke Jackson to two-year deals. It appeared that 2023 and 2024 were going to be dedicated to bringing the top prospects in the organization up, and the players above were signed to compete over these two seasons.
The season was going well for the most part. After a ninth-inning comeback win against the Angels on Aug. 7 in Anaheim, the Giants were 62-51; held the first wild card spot in the National League; and were four games up on a playoff spot.
However, it was just one of six wins the Giants had on the road from July 19 through the end of the season, as the Giants went 6-28 in their final 34 road games, which was one of many reasons the team fell all the way to under .500 and finished five games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks for the third wild card.
It was a collapse that cost Manager Gabe Kapler his job just two years after winning the National League Manager of the Year Award for his job in 2021. Now, Zaidi will commence his second search for a new manager with the team, as he heads into the final year of his contract.
“I think there’s a good chance we [will] start with internal candidates, maybe by the end of this week,” Zaidi said. “I would guess we’ll start reaching out to teams on permissions for people in other organizations at the beginning of next week.”
Zaidi addressed concerns over looking to bring in a new manager a multi year contract while he himself is not signed beyond next season.
“The reaction, and the amount of incoming calls we’ve gotten serves to support the view that this is a really highly-sought-after position in an organization that’s really highly regarded in the game and in the industry,” said Zaidi. “I don’t anticipate any issues there……I haven’t sensed any concerns from people.
Zaidi hired Kapler in large part due to their experience together in the Dodgers Organization, as well as Kapler’s philosophy of “new age” baseball. However, Zaidi appeared flexible to different styles of baseball, including old school baseball.
“There’s no template,” said Zaidi. “I’ve worked with managers, who have different experiences and different styles, and I think we want to be as broad [with] our search as possible.”
Zaidi also expressed willingness to hire a manager who he does not have experience working with.
Kapler’s firing was in large part due to the lack of motivation in the clubhouse over the final two months of the season, but that was hardly the only issue for the Giants.
Another one of the big issues for the Giants this season was the offense. The team overly relied on the home run, and that proved to be one of their many downfalls, as they set a single-season franchise record with 1,468 strikeouts.
When the Giants were going strong in June; in their first five games after the All-Star Break; and even for a brief period at the end of August when they won four out of five, they were playing the same situational baseball that won them three world championships in five seasons what now seems so long ago.
“We value contact,” said Zaidi. “[When] we look at our minor leaguers and guys coming up through the system, one of the key traits we look at in hitters to get promoted and work their way up to the big leagues is guys that make contact, and guys that don’t chase.”
A positive for the team was the prospects. Casey Schmitt, Patrick Bailey, Luis Matos, Marco Luciano, Kyle Harrison and Tyler Fitzgerald made their marks this season, and they are expected to play big roles next season, as Zaidi announced the organization’s intention to have Luciano be the everyday shortstop next season.
“Guys like Schmitt and Matos have a chance to be internal solutions,” said Zaidi. “It’s going to be about consistency with the quality of their at-bats, which we saw for stretches from both of those guys, and that goes for Luciano and Fitzgerald as well. These guys all have chances to be part of a position player group that’s really good defensively that’s here for the long term, and it’s just going to be about whether we’re getting enough from them offensively, so that’s going to be the challenge.”
Zaidi said that the next wave of prospects that will come up next season will mainly be on the pitching side. Prospects that could come up next year include Carson Wisenhunt, Mason Black, Hayden Birdsong and Landen Roupp.
“I think we have a really good group of starting pitchers that we’re going to see next year, who have a chance to make a big impact on the pitching staff and the rotation.”
As for last winter’s free agent signings, Conforto missed all of 2022 due to surgery on his right shoulder, and while he put together a hot stretch in the middle of the season, he eventually flamed out to a .239 batting average, as he could opt out of his contract. Haniger missed the first three and a half weeks of the season, and then suffered a broken right forearm after being hit by a pitch from Jack Flaherty on June 13 in St. louis. Haniger ended up hitting .209 in just 61 games.
Stripling struggled, and made noise, as he took umbrage with the Giants’ use of him and the pitching staff throughout the season. For most of the season, the rotation consisted of Alex Cobb, Logan Webb and three bullpen games. The bullpen games worked for the most part until August, but Manager Gabe Kapler opted to give Stripling and Manaea starts in September. Manaea struggled throughout much of the season, but he did put a stretch of a few strong starts together when he was given a chance in September.
Zaidi said that he wants a manager who will be a strong recruiter of free agents. Zaidi had a back and forth with Bonta Hill, the co-host of the Morning Roast at 95.7 The Game, about controversial comments Zaidi made last December regarding the team’s apparent inability to sign marquee free agents after the Giants were unable to sign Aaron Judge.
There is a lack of confidence amongst the fan base, as the Giants drew 2,500,153, the second-lowest non-pandemic season attendance since moving to the corner of 3rd and King. That is going to make this a big winter for the Giants and Zaidi, whose contract runs up after next season, because if the Giants show more disappointment in the standings, there is good reason to believe that even more major changes could be made.
