After a six-year hiatus, a California League Hall of Fame baseball manager was asked to come back to the minor leagues.
What he found broke his baseball heart. And still, 1971 Kalani alum Lenn Sakata took his team to another championship.
The San Jose Giants captured their 12th title last month. Sakata coached four of those teams (2001, 2005, 2007, 2021) in his eight years with San Jose. His mural is painted on the side of the iconic and immensely fan-friendly Excite Ballpark — better known as San Jose Municipal Stadium, which turns 80 in March.
Three years ago Sakata was inducted into the California League Hall of Fame, along with Joe Morgan and Roberto Alomar.
Sakata, who played on the Baltimore Orioles’ 1983 World Series championship team, had ridiculous credentials, including most victories, consecutive winning seasons, playoff appearances and Cal League championships.
When Kyle Haines, the San Francisco Giants Director of Player Development, asked his former manager to come back after six years, Sakata had a sense something old was up.
Sakata had been seeing players underachieving with no one held accountable. He sees front offices full of “newbie and computer types moving a new way” in the game he loves.
He wanted to know what the new way was.
“It seemed so off the wall and didn’t make sense to me,” he said. “There’s more time spent on analytical stuff, like TrackMan … nothing to do with teaching the game. I thought the game was heading in the wrong direction.
“There’s nobody from the bygone day. What’s happening is the actual nuances of the game are left out and nobody is teaching the game the way it was.”
Sakata did, in spite of having little control of his team’s hitting and no call on players coming and going off his massive and rapidly changing roster.
His team went 76-44 in the regular season and swept Fresno in the Championship Series, muzzling the Grizzlies into a .182 batting average and five runs in the three games.
“A lot of it was the fact we had better talent,” Sakata said, “even though it might not seem like it. A lot of it was we were playing to win and others did not.”
Sakata played on Kalani’s lone state high school championship team in 1970. This year he managed a team whose oldest player was 26 and had two teenagers, including Low-A West League MVP Luis Matos.
They were familiar with the new trends of accumulating infinite data and being coached to stare at an iPad full of numbers instead of watching an opposing pitcher warm up.
That stuff makes Sakata crazy. So does the “lack of warmth” dealing with young players.
“The reality is there is only one way,” he says, “play to win and play the right way.”
In his admittedly old eyes, the right way has more to do with fundamentals, technique, teamwork, dedication and competitiveness than anything found on a computer.
Numbers are for bettors. High-level baseball is for players who love the game so much they are willing to work hard enough to surpass their potential and help teammates surpass theirs.
“You can put anybody in a uniform,” he says, “but ultimately somebody has to win or lose and if you are seeking perfection you want a winning player.”
Creating those players, from a new generation, might actually be what Sakata does best.
And he just keeps doing it. Every time another baseball team asks.
“Now I tell my team about players from 10 years ago and they have no idea who I’m talking about,” Sakata laughs. “But the kids did listen once I convinced them it was the right way to do it, then they bought into it. The key is not to give them much leeway. I was the old man so you got to adjust to me, not me to you.”
Ultimately Sakata was proud, and a bit surprised, to characterize his latest championship team as one of the best he’d coached at that level “in terms of chemistry and talent and the pace that they improved.”
Within a few years, he expects to see guys like catcher Patrick Bailey and pitchers Kyle Harrison (the league’s Pitcher of the Year), Cole Waites, Freelander Boloilo, Ryan Murphy and Randy Rodriguez in the majors.
Sakata and his staff stressed throwing strikes over the shortened (120 games) season. Giants pitchers ended up setting a team record for strikeouts, averaging 12 a game and finishing more than 100 Ks ahead of the other 119 Minor League teams.
Those are also just numbers, but Sakata and his players ultimately understood how and why it all happened.
“Toward the end of the year the guys who had been with me all year … I started reaching them about what my intent was,” Sakata said. “At the end of the year more than a handful of kids came up and said, ‘Thanks for helping me. I learned a lot.’ That’s what I missed.”
