The score at Oracle Park is 153 feet wide and 70 feet tall. It’s the first 4K marker in MLB, the most expensive upgrade to the Giants stadium in the 20 years of its existence, and it was reportedly a popular addition last season.
But for the past month it served a new and unique purpose. During summer camp, the $ 10 million Diamond Vision board was the most expensive calendar in the world.
Bank coach Kai Correa brought a new level of organization to the club’s headquarters this spring, posting detailed daily schedules on a vertically mounted television near the door of the club’s headquarters at Scottsdale Stadium. The days of drills and a lineup posted on a corkboard in the morning instantly disappeared. The Giants could change their BP schedule or groups with the click of a mouse or swipe, instantly relaying that information to players, and when Correa was tasked with figuring out how to run spring training at Oracle Park, he expanded so early work.
The calendar was posted on the scoreboard at the beginning of each session, and players knew so far where they were supposed to be or what exercise they should be doing. When the simulated games started, the position changes were noticed in advance on the scoreboard. If a player or coach got lost, all he had to do was look to center field.
Day after day, exercise after exercise, the Giants followed that schedule. Each passing hour brought them closer to real baseball.
“It felt like an advent calendar,” Correa said last week, “except that it was happening on the scoreboard.”
The Giants spent those three weeks largely due to Correa, a 31-year-old player who was kicked out of the minor leagues by Gabe Kapler to be the youngest bench coach in the majors. During the first four games in Los Angeles and last night’s opening game, every time the camera looked at Kapler, Correa stood just a few feet away, mask on, notes in hand, ready to help take the next decision.
The bench coach is an important job in any bench, but for Kapler, position is crucial. The Giants could play the games more than any other team in the big leagues, and Correa will be there every step of the way, trying to help Kapler press the right buttons. It’s a job he has no experience with, but Kapler felt it was perfect for him. When he was hired by Farhan Zaidi, Kapler knew what his next step would be.
“Kai was the first guy I had to have on our staff,” he said earlier this summer.
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Correa, a former infielder at Puget Sound University, is just three years from an assistant coach position at the University of Northern Colorado. He spent the previous two years working as a field coordinator and defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Indians. That is a far cry from the No. 2 job on a major league team, but Kapler had been watching Correa for years.
The first time Correa became aware was when Kapler was the head of the Dodgers’ farm and investigated a group of college coaches. Correa had created a small group of followers with instructional videos that he posted on social media, and when Kapler became manager, he interviewed Correa in Philadelphia in 2019 before finally going with a more experienced candidate.
When he met Zaidi last fall, Kapler came prepared. Zaidi would ask potential managers about staff preferences, and most recited three or four familiar names. Kapler presented a spreadsheet, with levels of coaches ranging from experienced, to less familiar, to less experienced but with advantages. Correa fell into the last category. Neither Zaidi nor General Manager Scott Harris had heard of him until Kapler received a scouting report.
“The impression that Kai went through that interview process in Philadelphia really stuck with him,” Zaidi said. “It is truly a tribute to Gabe’s depth of research and knowledge of the baseball and training landscape in particular.”
In that sense, Correa is no different than most of the players he is training. The Giants have made no secret of the fact that they are trying to unearth gems, the upcoming Max Muncys or Mike Yastrzemskis, at the major league level. Kapler is trying to do the same with his young coaching staff, and so far Correa has received strong criticism.
The first camp was remarkably organized, a by-product of Correa who spent eight to 10 hours a day in the off-season working on defensive schedules and graphics that played in a loop on the clubhouse televisions. When the Giants moved spring training to Oracle Park, work accelerated. The Giants split into three groups, placing a cage in the left field corner for additional live BP sessions and a mound near the wall in the left center so pitchers could work on the pickoffs. The players’ parking lot was converted to a grass field and weight room. Correa and the rest of the coaches had a list of 12 vignettes of what the staff needed, and the facilities crew made them all available.
“There were a couple of factors. One had Oracle’s blueprints in my hands to see every nook and cranny, and then it was about having very long conversations with people like Wo (Ron Wotus) and Alyssa (Nakken) and Brad (Grems). about what we could do and spend time in hallways, buildings and spaces, “Correa said. “You find yourself in spaces you don’t know. The other thing was to really immerse yourself in what’s important. That’s the fun of a camp like this, you take off all the luxuries.”
Correa said he has relied heavily on Wotus throughout this process, and for good reason. Wotus did the job from 1999 to 2017, planning schedules and trainings for two decades and helping his successor, Hensley Meulens, to do the same. Ask the Giants officials what has stood out about Correa so far and one thing they will point to is humility and his ability to step back and let Wotus lead the way sometimes.
The new staff also showed their willingness to be in the background in other ways. Because the members of the field team are Level 3 individuals, they are not allowed to be on the field at the same time as the players and coaches, considered Level 1. As the field team observed the drills, they noted that Coaches had taken the lead in moving. cages and equipment when the ground crew could not get out of the stands.
All of that work brought the Giants to this point, and on Tuesday night, they finally stopped at their shelter in Oracle Park for a game that counted. Correa was thrown directly into the fire, facing the Dodgers and his own analytics machine in his first series as a major league coach, and Kapler was pleased with the work he did over the weekend. He said Correa, as expected, came “specially prepared,” and from the outside, the Giants seemed to have a good handle on their staff during a four-game division.
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While defense and execution were sloppy on the field at times, it was difficult to argue with any of the moves Kapler made when the games were close, and he deftly handled the victories on Saturday and Sunday. His hand-picked right hand was there the entire time, soaking up his first major league series. For Correa, the start of the actual games could have been a relief after all it took to get here.
“Once the games start, then it’s just baseball,” he said. “Then the competitive juices take over there.”
