SAN FRANCISCO — Amid one of many Giants’ worst stretches of baseball underneath supervisor Gabe Kapler, the third-year skipper got here ready for his pregame session with reporters Sunday with a message for his crew.
“I don’t suppose that we’ve introduced our greatest ranges of vitality to the ballpark over course of the final couple of weeks,” Kapler stated to start a six-minute spiel on the Giants’ latest effort.
After Saturday’s 5-3 loss to the White Sox, the Giants had dropped 9 of their previous 12 and did not win any of the three sequence on this dwelling stand that featured all three opponents with dropping information. Coming into Sunday, they have been a season-high 8.5 video games again of the Dodgers for first place within the NL West and two video games out of the third wild card spot.
Saturday’s loss was solely the newest to characteristic a number of defensive miscues, with Kapler afterward calling the efficiency “not adequate.”
Lower than 24 hours later, Kapler was requested about the potential for calling up prospects from Triple-A Sacramento to inject one thing completely different into the stumbling membership.
“Are you occupied with, like, vitality sort of stuff?” Kapler responded. “You’re giving me alternative to speak about a few of the issues I feel we’ve all been seeing.
“I feel it’s essential to look at the place we’re spending our vitality,” he continued. “One factor that I feel we are able to all do is take the vitality that we’re spending on issues that we are able to’t management and make investments it into teammates.”
Examples of dangerous vitality, in response to the college of Kapler: chewing on an umpire’s name all inning, complaining a few daunting journey schedule or circumstances on the sphere, reacting poorly to a teammate’s misplay, evaluating this 12 months to their 107-win marketing campaign final season.
“Are we taking that vitality and throwing our palms up and being upset at a few of the issues which are exterior of our management,” Kapler stated, “or are we investing that vitality into the group in a optimistic approach?”
Kapler didn’t query his gamers’ effort; the message revolved round channelling vitality in a optimistic approach.
“It doesn’t should be some pollyannaish optimistic bulls—,” Kapler stated. ” It may be generally a problem. We'd like one thing extra from you. However it’s directed and it’s intentional and it isn’t chaotic. … It’s extra what does every particular person our roster want proper now? Encouragement, bar elevating, a little bit tweak within the follow routine.”
Kapler, who prefers one-on-one interactions to crew conferences, stated he raised the problems in particular person conversations.
“It’s one of many issues we really feel like we are able to do to vary the course and accomplish that shortly,” Kapler stated. “It’s not one particular person making the dedication to speculate vitality into our teammates and into this crew; it’s all people making that call and collectively you'll be able to actually change the vitality shortly.”