In southern California, it's been 31 years and counting since the Los Angeles Dodgers won a World Series. With a third straight trip to the Fall Classic thwarted this year by the eventual champion Washington Nationals, the Dodgers can at least celebrate some individual achievements. Meanwhile, up north in San Francisco, the Giants have a new manager for only the fifth time in 35 years, but the choice is not exactly getting a ringing endorsement from the cable cars on the street.

We'll get to the Giants in a moment, but as far as the players go in the National League, the Yeli-Belli battle lives on. Cody Bellinger barely beat out Milwaukee's Christian Yelich for the MVP award, causing him to get a little emotional on live TV when the announcement was made on Thursday.

At home with his family, the camera caught Cody's dad Clay (who played in the big leagues) hug him. Mom, sitting next to Cody on the couch, had tears in her eyes, and Cody had to hold back a few himself. “It's what you dream of, man,” said Bellinger when asked why the MVP award was so special to him.

Bellinger batted .305 with 47 home runs and 115 RBIs. He didn't lead the league in any of those categories, and his average steadily declined over the course of the season after a red-hot start. Yelich (.329, 44 HR, 97 RBI) led the league in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage, but also missed the final three weeks of the season after getting hit in the knee with a pitch. Washington's Anthony Rendon (.319, 34 HR, 126 RBI), who had a hot second half, finished third in the voting.

In just his third season, Bellinger is flying in some rarified air. He is the sixth MVP in LA Dodger history (Maury Wills 1962, Sandy Koufax 1963, Steve Garvey 1974, Kirk Gibson 1988, and Clayton Kershaw 2014). He is just the third player in Dodger franchise history to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in a career (Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe).

Oh, and he's only 23.

Gabe Kapler, on the other hand, is 44. While that's almost twice Bellinger's age, it's pretty young for a major league manager. Just more than 24 hours before Bellinger picked up his MVP trophy, Kapler was officially named manager of the San Francisco Giants. The sounds that you heard in the Bay Area? Crickets.

Kapler spent this season and the previous one as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. After the 2019 acquisitions of Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Andrew McCutchen and only a .500 record to show for it, Kapler was shown the door.

In Kapler's introductory news conference on Wednesday, it wasn't even Kapler's managerial record that was talked about. Before being named Philadelphia's manager prior to the 2018 season, Kapler was the director of the Dodgers minor league system. During that time, a couple of minor league players were accused of sexual assault. Kapler, at the time, and still, has been criticized for the way he handled the issue.

For almost an entire hour, the questions that were asked of Kapler and the Giants upper management, was about the sexual assault incident. The Giants were aware that would be a main topic, and even brought it up before the reporters did, but that didn't seem to help. Social media reactions from Giants fans were not positive, either.

One newspaper headline called out the Giants for 'going with their gut, and not doing their homework' when it came to the managerial search. Another reason for the largely negative reaction could be that Bruce Bochy, who managed the team to three World Series titles in five years, announced his impending retirement before this season even started, giving the Giants several months to find a candidate.

Even though Kapler is off to a rocky start before he even manages a spring training game, longevity could be on his side. Since 1985, the only managers the Giants had were Roger Craig, Dusty Baker, Felipe Alou, Bochy, and now Kapler. Previous to Craig though, Jim Davenport only lasted part of one season.

Kapler spent his introduction to the Bay Area apologizing, and that's before his team starts to lose games, which they will. The Giants seem to be in a re-building mode, and unless they make some stunning blockbuster trade, or sign more than one top-tier free agent, they aren't expected to do much in 2020. At least Kapler will have his 'I'm sorry' speech well rehearsed.

Giant loss: The first major free agent signing of the off-season is a costly one to Giants fans. Closer Will Smith has signed a three-year deal with Atlanta. He's the first free agent of the winter to switch teams. Madison Bumgarner will likely be next.

No lovely parting gift: Speaking of free agents, the Dodgers are not expected to re-sign pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu, who is now a free agent. Despite a 14-5 record, and a major-league best 2.32 ERA, Ryu did not win the Cy Young award, finishing second to Jacob deGrom of the Mets, who won it for the second straight year. Ryu was dominant all season long until the final three to four weeks. While that apparently cost him the award, it should have strengthened his case. Look at it this way, he had about half-a-dozen terrible starts, and still finished with the best ERA in the majors. That makes him pretty darn good.

College football note: For the second straight year, no one outside of LA will care about this, but Saturday's UCLA-USC game will be at 12:30pm and shown on ABC. Appointment viewing. Or not.