San Francisco Giants to interview Padres Bob Melvin

Ever since the Giants fired Gabe Kapler 159 games into the season, we’ve been left to speculate who might replace him. There haven’t really been any frontrunners or favorites.

Until now.

On Sunday, The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly and Dennis Lin reported that the Giants had received permission from the San Diego Padres to interview manager Bob Melvin.

That’s significant news, not just because it’s a big name that the Giants are interviewing, but because it inherently makes Melvin the odds-on favorite to win the job. The Giants were reportedly targeting Melvin before the season ended, but the Padres — much to the surprise of many — publicly pledged to let him finish out his contract, which has one more year on it. Some speculated that this was San Diego hoping that another team would hire Melvin so they could “let him go,” instead of firing him and owing him the $4 million he’s set to make in 2024.

That speculation seems accurate, and it seems that the Giants are that team. Nothing is set in stone, but it’s not exactly standard procedure for a manager to interview for a position while currently employed in that same position with a division rival, and doubly so when it’s someone of Melvin’s stature. The Giants would not make such a request, and the Padres would not honor it, if things weren’t fairly clear. It’s pretty difficult to imagine Melvin, fresh off a frustrating year in which the partnership with Padres President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller was openly not working, interviewing with a rival and then returning to San Diego to play out his contract.

Assuming the Giants hire Melvin, it’s a move that will surely have some critics, but probably more supporters. The downsides are obvious: for a Giants team trying to rebuild, find an identity, and catch up to the times, you can understand a desire to move forward with a fresh face and a long-term up-and-comer, rather than someone who has already managed four different MLB teams and turns 62 this week. You can also point to the fact that it took a hotter-than-hot final month of the season for Melvin’s Padres — loaded with Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Ha-seong Kim, Blake Snell, and Josh Hader — to finish all of two games above .500.

But the upsides are even more obvious. Melvin is one of the most respected managers in baseball for a reason, having amassed more than 1,500 wins in his 20-year career. He worked closely with Farhan Zaidi during his 11-year stint managing the Oakland A’s, and the two clearly work well together. He’s well known for prioritizing analytics without being overly reliant on them, and he worked wonders with an underfunded A’s team, including back-to-back 97-win seasons a few years ago.

And even a cursory glance at the 2022 Padres — who went 89-73 with a much less-talented roster than this year’s disappointment — makes it easy to dismiss 2023 as an outlier. Or heck, even look at this year, when the Padres had a +104 run differential, which was third-best in the National League.

There’s also the whole local thing. Melvin was born in Palo Alto, played high school ball at Menlo-Atherton, played college ball at Cal, and spent three years playing alongside Mike Krukow on the Giants. And it doesn’t hurt that he had a good relationship with most of the Padres players, seeing as how Soto is set to be a free agent that the Giants should be all over in a year’s time.

And then there’s, you know ... the whole hiring a former MLB catcher away from the Padres while still under contract thing. It worked pretty damn well the last time, if memory serves me correctly.

The biggest upside, however, might be on the recruiting front. Not only is Melvin a respected manager who veterans will want to play for, but he has very close ties to many of MLB’s Asian players. And in case you’re behind on the news, the Giants are pursuing Japan’s Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Korea’s Jung-hoo Lee very aggressively.

Among Melvin’s most compelling attributes: a sterling reputation among players that he has managed from Pacific Rim countries. Melvin has maintained a friendship with Ichiro Suzuki, whom he managed in Seattle from 2003-04, including the season in which Ichiro collected 262 hits to set the major-league record. In San Diego, Melvin also meshed well with Yu Darvish, who shares the same agent as Yamamoto and has been known to be an influential advisor to free-agent star players from Japan.

And Melvin established a solid rapport the past two seasons with Padres infielder Ha-seong Kim, who was Lee’s former teammate and close friend with Kiwoom.

Adding to the managerial news is a report from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, who says that Melvin would likely bring former Giants player Matt Williams, who was the third base coach for the Padres, with him to Oracle Park. The Giants current third base coach, Mark Hallberg, is respected enough that the team interviewed him for the manager position, so I doubt they’re keen to let him go, but perhaps there will be a restructuring.

Slusser also notes that the team is considering promoting former Giants Pat Burrell and Ryan Vogelsong — who both currently work for the Giants Minor League affiliates — to hitting coach and pitching coach, respectively. Burrell was rumored to be in consideration for the manager’s job, and has earned high praise for his developmental work ... plus, let’s be honest: some new hitting coaches would be a good thing.

Fitting in Vogelsong would be more difficult, as current pitching coach Andy Bailey has done a fantastic job and is respected by the team’s players. But the Giants also never replaced Brian Bannister, so perhaps a Vogelsong promotion would merely be an addition to the team, not a displacement.

Either way, the Giants coaching staff is going to look a lot different next season. Hopefully their roster and record will, too.