Dodgers recognize plan behind Giants return to relevance – Daily News

SAN FRANCISCO – Sitting in the visitors’ dugout canoe ahead of a game in Cincinnati last month after the San Francisco Giants scored another unlikely victory the night before, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked if he believed the ” baseball gods’ would sometimes bend over and magically sprinkle dust on a team, choosing them for special things.

“No,” Roberts said, pausing. “I’m just going to say ‘No’ for that answer.”

So how does a team projected in March of 75-87 so completely exceed their coverage? It must be some kind of devil magic.

“It’s not insulting. It’s a little flattering – because you’re successful at a level that people think they have to wrestle with for an explanation, ”Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said of the skepticism. constant who followed his team through his best baseball. A 107-game winning season and an NL Division Series clash with the Dodgers starting Friday night at Oracle Park.

“We know it’s just the talent, hard work and character of this team and the coaching staff. When you know that this is sort of the root of your success and other people are desperately trying to find other ways to explain it, that’s a good thing. It just shows that your hard work has paid off.

That it paid off so quickly – this is Zaidi’s third year in San Francisco, Gabe Kapler’s second as manager – after four consecutive losing seasons seems to be ahead of schedule. That is, if there was a timeline.

“It depends on what it is,” Zaidi said. “I mean, I’m still bitter that we didn’t make the playoffs last year.

“We wanted to find a way to play meaningful games and make the playoffs as early as possible. In my head, I never had a schedule for that. It wasn’t like, ‘Year four is the year of the playoffs.’ It was, “Let’s just make good moves and keep improving and when it happens, it happens. Even asking if it was a surprise is like saying there was a definite timeline, which there wasn’t.

Closest to the Dodgers Kenley Jansen, for his part, believes all the skepticism – and the attention given to the Dodgers ‘neighbor south – has provided fuel to supercharge the Giants’ return to relevance.

“Nobody’s talked about it,” Jansen said of the popular 2021 season narrative. “Everyone’s been talking about the Dodgers and the Padres and they’ve got that chip on their backs. You can see that. ”

The mantra “no one believed in us” is certainly as ubiquitous in October as the pumpkin spice. But there are other, more practical forces at work in the Giants’ resurgence – starting with the same principles Zaidi used as the Dodgers general manager under Andrew Friedman. These guiding principles are the basis of things like the Giants’ MLB record with 17 hits this season – not magic.

“They think a lot the same as we do when it comes to getting advantages in the field and in the match,” said Roberts.

Kapler – the Dodgers’ farm manager for four seasons under Friedman and Zaidi and the frontrunner for the managerial position when Roberts was hired – downplayed cross-pollination between the two organizations as a growth factor for the Giants.

“I think it’s less of a cross-pollination and more of two teams doing their best to be competitive and find advantages, but understanding that those aren’t always available,” Kapler said. “I think it’s a lot more, by coincidence, that some of the best teams in the game right now are approaching it the same way.”

There are clear similarities in the way the Giants and Dodgers approach things, Zaidi admitted. But he echoed Kapler, saying that “these principles of using the whole roster and putting players in the best position for success are pretty general principles around the game.”

“But at the end of the day I see a lot of similarities and when we face them I think we present a lot of confrontational challenges that they are trying to create for the opposition. And vice versa, ”Zaidi said. “So there’s a lot of, ‘Oh, okay – that’s what it feels like when you have to make a decision in the sixth inning. You bring in a pitcher and they line up and you lose the edge of the pack.

“I think there are a lot of similarities not only in the philosophy of list building, but also in the way Doc and Kap manage teams.”