San Francisco Giants hire Bob Melvin

San Francisco, CA (PSF) —Earlier this week on Tuesday, a report by The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly revealed that Bob Melvin was to be the next manager of the San Francisco Giants.

In a condensed interview process over the past 48 hours, nothing Bob Melvin said dissuaded the Giants. He's their choice to manage in 2024, sources tell @TheAthletic. https://t.co/dVWifuGWbe
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) October 24, 2023

Melvin, who turns 62 tomorrow, enters his era as the Giants’ manager with a career managerial record of 1517-1425, good for a .516% winning percentage. Melvin is an esteemed baseball mind and figure, and a three-time Manager of the Year: once with Arizona in 2007 and twice with Oakland in 2012 and 2018.

He has a storied history in the Bay Area. A Palo Alto native, Melvin grew up a Giants fan and a fan of Bay Area sports. He attended the University of California Berkeley, played for the San Francisco Giants from 1986-1988, and managed the Oakland A’s from 2011-2021. With his strong ties to the Bay Area, it’s no wonder why Melvin was transparent when asked about his desire to coach the Giants someday.

Bob Melvin on imagining he'd one day manage the Giants:

"Every series I would look in that dugout, look to the other side and say 'maybe someday, hopefully.'..There were always times here, I can admit that now, that I was hoping at some point in time I'd come back."
— KNBR (@KNBR) October 25, 2023

Melvin departs from a San Diego Padres team that was wildly disappointing all season. They finished at a mediocre 82-80, albeit with the third-best run-differential in the National League. Melvin now takes the reigns of a franchise that could not be more different than San Diego’s. With a lack of star players and a wide variety of complementary platoon players, Melvin faces a different scenario as opposed to being San Diego’s manager.

He is expected to play a factor in recruiting players in free agency and has experience working with many international stars, such as Ichiro, Yu Darvish, and Ha-Seong Kim, all of whom have connections to Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Jung-Ho Lee. The Giants’ roster may potentially look quite different next year, meaning Melvin will likely be quite involved in who he brings to his roster in order to become acclimated with them.

Players rave about Melvin’s abilities as a leader, and his personable nature in the locker room. Having experience with both analytics-driven managerial style, as well as making his own calls, creates a much better balance in the Giants’ functionality. Too often did it feel like matchups were over-manipulated, and players were coached properly the past few years for the Giants, and now Melvin’s supportive, but stern, analytical, but authentic managerial style should remedy this.

The Giants now enter the offseason with one less question. As the World Series plays out, the upcoming offseason looms large. Starved of talent, everyday consistency, and exciting baseball, the calls of the Giants fans will surely influence the President of Baseball Operations and Melvin to be aggressive when pursuing big-name free agents. With a three-time manager of the year leading the group, and a World Series berth not even a decade ago, the Giants will attempt to sway as much talent to San Francisco as they possibly can.

When holes are plugged and the talent is (theoretically) improved, there are high levels of confidence within the Giants’ Front Office that Bob Melvin will align the Giants back on the path of winning baseball. Coming off a disappointing 2023 season where the Giants finished 79-83, the desire is that Melvin brings the Giants back to the style of baseball than fans know and love.

And hey, remember what happened the last time the Giants hired away a manger from the Padres?

Oh yeah, this: