San Francisco Giants: Kapler preaches process as road to postseason toughens

DENVER — On a bright and beautiful Sunday morning at Coors Field, San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler was insistent that the sky was not falling on his team.

Dropping four of their last five games heading into Sunday’s series finale against the Colorado Rockies, the San Francisco Giants have slipped in the National League Wild Card standings, starting the day 2.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot. While Kapler is aware of the numbers, he is also preaching patience and his mantra that every day being a new day inside his clubhouse.

“I’m a big believer that every day is a new day,” Kapler said. “I’m a big believer in the one (game) in front of us is the one that matters.

“I don’t think these last three games (all losses in Denver) even existed relative to today’s baseball game.”

San Francisco Giants staying course despite rough September stretch

Following Sunday’s finale in Colorado, the Giants continue their road trip with two games in Arizona (after an off day on Monday) followed by four games in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. If there was a time for the Giants to get right, it’s against two teams that are ahead of them in the division and postseason standings.

“There’s plenty of time to make the postseason and have a deep postseason run,” Kapler said, knowing his team has 13 games left to decide their fate. “But I don’t think that’s the most important part of the messaging and conversations we’re having. The most important part is that there’s still time to make adjustments that will yield results this season.”

It’s those adjustments that Kapler is confident in, knowing he has veterans on the team like Brandon Crawford and Joc Pederson who have been in the postseason crunch before.

“There’s plenty of time to make small tweaks to the processes and plenty of time to see the fruits of that labor,” Kapler said. “It starts with that, and then instead of coming to the ballpark on a daily basis asking, ‘Hey, what happened last night? Why didn’t we do this thing or that thing?,’ it’s what can we do today to impact the group, the environment, the culture and, most importantly, the mindset.”

While Giants fans may be sweating the road ahead, Kapler is focused on what can be done today, refusing to look too far ahead while also hoping the lessons learned today will pay dividends for his team over the final two weeks of the season.

“A lot of the messaging for today is that there is still plenty of time to make small adjustments that are going to make us better, both in the short team and in the long term,” Kapler said. “And that short term means today, tomorrow and the next day, but also means towards the end of the season and ’24.

“We just have to keep at it every single day, making the small process adjustments and working our a**es off because there is a lot of value in that.”