Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
Gabe Kapler has always seemed to find the bright side of the Major League Baseball-Players Association battle, believing in the end there will be an agreement.
That opinion has not changed, though its conviction has in the days after Rob Manfred reneged on his “100 percent” certainty a 2020 season would be played as MLB reportedly wants the union to promise not to file a grievance against it, threatening to withhold the abbreviated season if that demand isn’t met.
“I can’t swear that I know where this is going,” the Giants manager said on “Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks” on Tuesday. “I think I’m just like everybody else around the industry, players, coaches, executives included. It’s hard to forecast. I’m doing exactly what you guys are doing right now — I’m doing a lot of reading, reading every article that comes out from [Jeff] Passan and [Ken] Rosenthal and all the national writers, kind of reading the tea leaves right along with you.
“I still have optimism that we’re going to play baseball this year. If I have to bet on it, I’m betting that we are.”
If he wins that bet, the heavy likelihood is the season would be more sprint than marathon, perhaps a 50-ish-game regular season before expanded playoffs. Kapler pointed to his 2018 season with the Phillies, a young, inexperienced bunch that “on paper, we weren’t a very good team.” On the field, though, on June 18 they were 38-32 through 70 games.
“We were over our skis a little bit, but we were hanging in there,” Kapler said on KNBR. “Right around that 60-game mark, we felt pretty good about our chances. Now, ultimately we weren’t able to hang on and get to the postseason. It’s just a really good example sometimes teams that don’t match up on paper can have a really good 50-, 60-, 70-game stretch. The more games you play, the less likely, if you’re not all that talented, that you get to the dance.”
The Giants would not have high expectations in a season whose very existence’s expectations are falling. Yet, if it is played, there’s hope to be found in a smaller sample size.