Who Duane Kuiper might hand-select to replace Mike Krukow in SF Giants broadcast booth

The final game Mike Krukow will call for the SF Giants this season will be on September 27 before he retires. That is officially less than a month from now and fans will have to fully process all of the emotions that will come with saying goodbye to a legend.

Naturally, everyone is wondering who might replace Krukow in the booth. There are some obvious candidates, but perhaps a more important question is who will choose.

NBC Sports Bay Area will likely have the final say, but one can only imagine Krukow’s longtime broadcast partner, former teammate, and best friend Duane Kuiper will have a big say in the matter. He’s said that he’d like to be included in the process which is more than fair. Kuip deserves the chance to end his career with pretty much whoever he wants.

With that in mind, let’s think about three candidates to replace Krukow who Kuiper might be partial to.

3 candidates to replace Mike Krukow if Duane Kuiper could choose

Glen Kuiper

In terms of comfort, there’s probably no one Kuip would be more comfortable with than his brother Glen Kuiper. The younger Kuiper brother briefly played minor league baseball but has been a broadcaster for most of his career.

He served as the play-by-play man for the Oakland A’s from 2006 to 2023 before he got fired for seemingly accidentally saying a racial slur during a pregame broadcast.

The Giants have gotten Kuiper involved this year as a fill-in on the radio side so there is a chance he could get involved on the TV side after Krukow has retired. That would obviously not come without controversy, but if Duane Kuiper wants his brother involved then it’s a real possibility.

They are both play-by-play guys so maybe Duane Kuiper would have to shift to being the color commentator which he could easily do if needed.

Dennis Eckersley

This one would be a bit out of nowhere, but Steve Rissotto threw out the former Oakland A’s great Dennis Eckersely as a possibility on social media, citing the fact that they were former teammates in Cleveland, used to be the Boston Red Sox color commentator, and resides in the East Bay.

Who knows if Eckersley would even want to do it, but he would at least be an old-school pitcher in the same vein as Krukow so maybe it could work.

Generational change candidate

There’s also a chance that Kuiper feels it’s the time to pass the baton to the next generation. Maybe he wants to help someone like Hunter Pence, Javier Lopez, or Shawn Estes grow into the job and set them up for success whenever he retires.

He’s called games with those guys in the past so there is a familiarity and it would make sense to have a former Giants player in the booth as the color commentator.

We will have to see who it ends up being, but expect Kuiper to be very involved in the process and have a very big say on who the next color commentator will be.

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