If the Phillies fired Gabe Kapler at least in part to appease a fanbase, the Giants seemingly didn't take appeasing their fanbase into account when hiring him.
Kapler was introduced as the next manager of the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday and if it only took until his first game in Philly to rile up fans, it happened on Day 1 on the job in San Francisco, months before pitchers and catchers report for spring training.
It was an unpopular hire prior to the introductory press conference and sitting in front of the Bay Area media for an hour seemingly raised more questions than it answered.
The Giants President of Baseball Operations, Farhan Zaidi, worked with Kapler during his time in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when the ugly incident in 2015 took place involving women being beaten in the hotel room of players from the organization. It's a complicated story which you can read up on if you're not familiar.
Zaida was on the defensive yesterday from the jump, referring to "the incidents in L.A." and attempting to justify an unpopular hire for the remainder of the session.
It isn't until 11 minutes and 20 seconds into the intro video on the Giants website that Kapler actually speaks. There was a lot of attempting to justify the hire.
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Both Zaidi and Kapler agree that they both should have done more in those incidents, that they've learned and grown from their mistakes. They both wanted to take accountability for their actions.
"One thing I'm pretty good at is making adjustments. When I find out that this is maybe not the most popular hire, I want to find out what those reasons are, and I want to get better at them," Kapler said, acknowledging he is already facing an uphill battle to win over fans in San Francisco.
Kapler also praised the city of San Francisco for being "diverse" and "accepting."
Gabe never entirely won over a challenging fan base in Philadelphia. Will San Francisco be more accepting of their new, unique manager? Only time will tell, but he's got a big hill to climb from day one.
You can watch the entire press conference below.
