Gabe Kapler

He was 3rd in the league in slugging percentage (.583), 4th in OPS (.976), 5th in batting average (.322), and tied for 8th in triples (6).

They met while working in the antiwar movement of the 1960s and moved to California in the 1970s.

Kapler and his brother Jeremy attended The Country School, due to their father's position on the faculty as a music teacher.

At the age of eight, he was hit by a car and needed therapy to overcome his fear of crossing streets.

He grew up in middle-class Reseda, Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, where he was the smallest player on his Reseda Little League team.

Kapler attended William Howard Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.

Gabriel Stefan Kapler (born July 31, 1975), nicknamed "Kap", is an American assistant general manager of the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball (MLB).

He is also a former professional baseball outfielder and manager in MLB.

His league record for RBIs broke the 1986 record of 132 set by Terry Steinbach.

He played shortstop, second base, and third base for its baseball team, hitting .313 in his senior season, and graduated in 1993 at age 17.

In his four seasons of high school baseball, he never hit a home run.

During the summer, he batted .350 with 4 home runs and 30 runs batted in (RBIs) for the Woodland Hills East American Legion team.

Kapler attended Cal State-Fullerton in fall 1993 on scholarship for one semester, before transferring to Moorpark College in the fall of 1994.

He was named First Team All-Western State Conference after batting .337 with seven home runs and 52 RBIs.

Kapler was a 57th-round draft pick (1,487th overall) by the Detroit Tigers in the 1995 MLB draft.

Kapler was the 57th-round draft pick (1,487th overall) of the Detroit Tigers in the 1995 Major League Baseball draft.

He was signed by scout Dennis Lieberthal, father of former Phillie Mike Lieberthal, after being offered a $10,000 signing bonus.

Playing 63 games for the Jamestown Jammers after he signed, he tied for second in the Class A- New York–Penn League in doubles (with 19), fifth in extra-base hits (27), and batted .288/.351/.453.

In the minor leagues, he was an All-Star in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and was recognized by national publications as Minor League Player of the Year in 1998.

In 1996, with the Fayetteville Generals, Kapler led the Class A South Atlantic League in hits (157), doubles (45; 2nd in the minor leagues), extra-base hits (71) and total bases (280), was second in homers (26), RBIs (99) and slugging (.534), 5th in batting (.300), 7th in runs (81) and 10th in on-base percentage (.380).

He made the South Atlantic League All-Star team.

He then played for the West Oahu CaneFires in the Hawaiian Winter League, leading the league in home runs with 7.

In 1997, with the Lakeland Flying Tigers, Kapler led the Class A+ Florida State League in doubles (40) and total bases (262), tied for first in extra-base hits (65), was 2nd in games, 3rd in hits (153), tied for 3rd in home runs (19) and RBIs (87), 4th in slugging percentage (.505), and tied for 4th in runs (87) and sacrifice flies (10), while batting .295.

He was named a Florida State League mid-season and post-season All-Star.

He then played for the Honolulu Sharks in the Hawaiian Winter League.

He played in the major leagues from 1998 to 2010, for the Tigers, Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Boston Red Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, and Tampa Bay Rays (except for the 2007 season, which — having briefly retired as a player — he spent managing the Greenville Drive of the South Atlantic League, the Single-A affiliate of the Red Sox).

In 1998, with the Jacksonville Suns, Kapler won the Class AA Southern League Most Valuable Player Award.

He hit a league-high 28 home runs, and also led the league in hits (176; 8th-most in the minors), runs (113; 6th-most in the minors), doubles (47; 3rd-most in the minor leagues; breaking the old doubles record of 44), RBIs (146; most in the minors in 1998, and most ever in the Southern League), extra-base hits (81; a league record), total bases (319; a league record), and sacrifice flies (11).

Kapler also spent part of the 2005 season playing for the Yomiuri Giants in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League.

He was inducted into the Moorpark College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008.

After permanently retiring as a player, Kapler served as a coach for the Israeli national baseball team in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, and as Director of Player Development for the Dodgers from 2014 through 2017.

He was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies in 2018 and 2019.

He became the manager of the San Francisco Giants in 2020, and led them to a franchise-record 107 wins and the NL West title in 2021.

Kapler was named the 2021 National League Manager of the Year.

ESPN described him as "an analytically savvy, outside-the-box thinker who [can] also relate well to players."

The Giants fired Kapler towards the end of the 2023 season.

In December 2023, Kapler became an assistant general manager of the Miami Marlins of MLB.

Kapler was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, and is Jewish.

His father, Michael, was a classical pianist originally from Brooklyn, New York who also wrote music and taught piano.

His mother, Judy, is an early childhood educator at a Jewish preschool who is originally from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.