Goodbye, Bob
Kinda rude of the Giants to preempt my Playoff Rooting Guide post, but I guess I'll manage
Regardless of whether or not Bob Melvin was the problem, he’s spent two years proving that he’s not the solution. He has had talented players and excellent individual seasons, but those were always balanced out by other players disappointing or failing to live up to their potential. Young players would get out to hot starts and then fizzle out; veterans would spend the entire season being comfortably mediocre. The team was stuck in the doldrums, with seemingly no way out.
But that wasn’t Melvin’s fault, right? Was he going to make Tyler Fitzgerald a passable hitter? Was he going to deyippify Ryan Walker? If he smacked Heliot Ramos’s knuckles with a ruler enough times, would that make Ramos better in left field? Yes, his bullpen management has been pretty questionable over the last couple months, but that’s because his bullpen was terrible, and that’s not really Melvin’s fault, is it? He didn’t trade Tyler Rogers or Camilo Doval. He didn’t get Randy Rodriguez or Erik Miller hurt. He just had to pick up the pieces, and ended up holding the bag, and that seems like a mixed metaphor, but if he put the pieces in the bag, then it works, so let’s not get too critical here.
On the other hand, what is the manager’s job if not to make players better and deal with the ones who won’t improve? Does he have no hand in anything? Bob Melvin put together a coaching staff that was in charge of players who didn’t seem like they were coached very well, and personally led a team that was liable to just take a couple weeks off at a time. So either he did a bad job as manager, or it wasn’t possible to do a good job as manager, and neither of those scenarios screams, “This guy should keep his job.”
But let’s assume that there are things that the manager controls, and these things have some importance when it comes to winning baseball games. Bob Melvin did not do those things well enough for the Giants to have a winning record. He also did not do those things well enough in his last season in San Diego, in which a team with the NL Cy Young winner and also a full season of Juan Soto won…82 games. 2025 marked Melvin’s third straight season of mediocrity, and it’s hard not to look at him and say, well, maybe he should change it up.
When evaluating a baseball team, it is important to ask both the questions, “Should this work?” and “Does this work?” Under Farhan Zaidi, the Giants focused heavily on process and went with the first question. Too many platoons should work! Using these pitchers in ways that they won’t like but are more efficient should work! Calling up a different guy every day for the last spot on the active roster should work!
But they didn’t work, and the Giants hired Melvin as a way to get away from some of the more egregious errors that they had been making. For the first couple months of the year, the answer to both “Should it work?” and “Does it work?” were, “I mean, kinda, I guess.” The team got off to a hot start, and then played .500 ball for a while, and then played under .500 ball for a while. They were a .500 team that had enjoyed an early hot streak.
But after the Devers trade, the answer to “Should it work?” became “Probably,” and the answer to “Does it work?” became “No.” That’s not to say that there weren’t unforeseen setbacks — Matt Chapman’s injury was a very big deal, and so was Landon Roupp’s — but on the whole, the team felt like less than the sum of its parts. Why didn’t Devers take them to the next level? Why was Jung Hoo Lee awful for two solid months? Why did Hayden Birdsong start going through his teen rebellion against the authoritarian concept of “strikes?”
Whether these were failures of player evaluation or coaching, Melvin and his staff carried some responsibility. Whatever mood that Melvin set in the clubhouse, it wasn’t the one that got the Giants a winning record. Whatever good in-game moves Melvin made, they were counterbalanced by the bad ones he made. It means something that the players didn’t turn on him:
But the team’s record also means something, and the record wasn’t good enough. Now it’s time to see what a new manager can do. Gabe Kapler didn’t work because he was too out there. Bob Melvin didn’t work because he was too in here. The Giants will presumably look for the Goldilocks candidate who’s just right. Perhaps they’ll re-integrate some of the analytics they de-integrated this season, or perhaps they’ll stay old school. Hopefully, they’ll bring in a coaching staff that teaches hitters how to do damage against a fastball. Hopefully, the bullpen won’t be a disaster. Hopefully, the team will be better.
All we really have for next season is hope. Buster Posey’s job is to hire a manager who turns that hope into wins.
Giants broadcasters are the best, but I often look-up how opposing teams call games on key plays, innings. So many times in wins/losses, announcers called out odd defensive alignments or not bringing the infield in, which scored a run (“waving the white flag” in Mets Citi series). Who do you blame?: Melvin and the coaches? Adames, Chapman, the clubhouse leaders, quarterbacking the infield? Shared? If opposing teams announcers are correct that Giants OF/IF defensive alignments were incorrect too often, how much did that impact Ramos, JHL, and other players who declined defensively? Baggs is still reminding us about Kapler’s weaknesses writing about Melvin’s departure (ex: not calling team meetings). Maybe he should focus more on the current season and why it went so wrong. The funniest is during Melvin’s last weeks, Baggs scolded a subscriber in the comments arguing that Kapler was wrong about an in-game move (fan agreed with Kapler). Dude, Kapler has been gone for 2 years, move on!
Thanks Doug for a nice summation of BoMel. But please stop with the negative rehashing of the Kapler/Zaidi years. I saw my first Giants game in 1952 and feel that Kapler was the smartest and most dynamic manager the team ever had, run out of town by three veterans who had bad seasons (Crawford, Yaz and Webb - especially Webb who failed down the stretch and then called for a “new culture”) that was gladly picked up by an ignorant media. Zaidi, also the best GM I ever saw (or maybe you’re a Spec Richardson fan) - was put in an impossible position because Posey was already warming up the bus that he would soon use to run over the former POBO. Given that Zaidi was welcomed back by the Dodgers tells all.