According to Craig Mish of SportsGrid and the Miami Herald, the Marlins and new president of baseball operations Peter Bendix have agreed to appoint former manager of the Phillies and Giants Gabe Kapler as an assistant general manager. After the 2023 season, San Francisco fired Kapler and replaced him with future Hall of Famer Bob Melvin. Mish continues, “Kapler was considering taking a job as the Red Sox’s head of baseball operations, but they ultimately hired another former big leaguer, Craig Breslow. Since being let go by the Giants, he has been searching for a new challenge in baseball operations.”
Before taking the helm as manager of the Phillies, Kapler was the farm director for the Dodgers, so this won’t be his first venture into baseball operations. During the previous six seasons, he managed San Francisco (2020–23) and Philadelphia (2018–19), amassing a 456-411 record. In 2021, he was named the National League Manager of the Year. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, he will now return to the other side of the game, concentrating mostly on player development within the Marlins’ system. The aforementioned Bendix leads baseball operations and is the president of the Marlins; the team does not have a general manager. However, Kapler will become the team’s fourth executive to hold the position of assistant, following Oz Ocampo, Brian Chattin, and Daniel Greenlee.
Bendix, who took over for General Manager Kim Ng after she turned down her 2024 mutual option, has made other recent hires in the baseball operations department. It is said that ownership intended to appoint a president of baseball operations to replace Ng in the front office hierarchy. This week, Vinesh Kanthan, a former assistant director of baseball operations for the Rangers, was hired by Miami to serve as their new director of baseball operations. This news was first reported by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.
