SAN FRANCISCO — In Gabe Kapler’s four years here, he came to enjoy nights when the moon was full. From his perch in the third-base dugout, its glow would slowly rise over the brick wall in right field, catching the attention of the former Giants manager. It’s a vantage point inaccessible from the visitor’s dugout along the first base line, so Bob Melvin was always left to his imagination.
And, yes, the Menlo Park-raised, Berkeley-educated former Giants catcher admitted Wednesday morning, it did cross his imagination. He thought about the possibility of one day occupying the home dugout as he ran the stadium stairs before the first game of his teams’ series here. He slid down the slide in the Coca Cola bottle beyond left field, at least until they roped it off, dreaming about the chance to do it 81 times a year.
“At least once every time I was here,” Melvin said, taking in that view beyond the right field wall from the suite level above third base, McCovey Cove’s blue waters glistening under the morning sun. He could admit it now because on Wednesday it became a reality. The 61-year-old Bay Area native was introduced by president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and chairman Greg Johnson as the club’s 39th manager, the 17th in its San Francisco-era history.
“It’s kind of a surreal moment for me,” he said. “Talk about full circle. To me this isn’t something as a kid I could even dream of.”
Melvin signed a three-year contract, pairing him through 2026 with Zaidi, whose contract that was set to expire after 2024 was extended for two more years. He was the top choice all along. They interviewed only five candidates, speaking informally to a few others, Zaidi said. Melvin had one year left on his contract in San Diego and only met with Zaidi for the first time last week, after the Padres granted permission, which Zaidi said the Giants weren’t sure would come.
“Obviously we were following Bob’s situation from afar,” Zaidi said, noting that it took “a couple productive conversations” with Padres general manager A.J. Preller last week to hammer out the details. Ultimately, the Padres requested no compensation from the Giants.
Zaidi described Melvin as a “natural fit” and “the perfect manager and the perfect leader for this organization right now,” citing their existing relationship from four years together in Oakland as “so secondary” to Melvin’s 20 years of managerial experience and his sterling reputation among players.
A three-time manager of the year, Melvin arrives with a 1,517-1,425 (.516) managerial record between Seattle, Arizona, Oakland and San Diego. But in 2023, his second season with the Padres, the star-studded roster missed the postseason and needed to win 14 of its final 16 games to finish a game above .500.
While thanking the Padres for being “flexible and accommodating,” Zaidi said that “Bob’s track record as a manager speaks for itself. … When you’re going through this process, you’re looking at the totality of someone’s career, their leadership, their characteristics. You’re not looking at recency bias or what happened over one season.”
Melvin, who was reported to be feuding with Preller, said he “didn’t want to get too much into the San Diego situation.”
“I really enjoyed my time there. Some things transpired last year in a difficult year for the team with high expectations,” he said. “There was a narrative at the end that probably wasn’t going to go away with me being on the last year of my contract. … It was time to move on.”
Despite that, Melvin said, the Giants job “was probably the only (opportunity) I would have listened to.”
Growing up in Menlo Park, where he was a two-sport star at Menlo-Atherton, Melvin fell in love with Bay Area sports. He rooted on the Giants and the A’s, the 49ers and the Raiders, Cal and Stanford, and the Warriors. “I was into it all,” he said. Turning pro in 1981, his playing career eventually brought him back home, where he was a backup catcher for Roger Craig’s “Humm Baby” clubs for three years, from 1986-88.
Melvin joked that he “didn’t play a ton and was in the bullpen quite a bit” but said that Craig, who died earlier this year year at the age of 93, “was the guy who made me watch the game like a manager.” Along the way, Melvin picked up old-school instincts from Phil Garner, the manager who gave him his first job on a major-league coaching staff, as the Brewers’ bench coach in 1999, and Sal Bando, the reason why Melvin wears No. 6 (and, sorry Casey Schmitt, will continue to in San Francisco).
Zaidi previously acknowledged that the Giants would have to “rethink everything,” but that doesn’t mean discarding analytics or matchup-based baseball, which Zaidi pointed out has been on display in the postseason. Melvin gained an appreciation for blending numbers with feel in Oakland, where he first met Zaidi and, to the chagrin of his new boss, named Billy Beane as one of his biggest influences in helping him evolve into a modern manager.
Zaidi said Melvin “has my complete trust” in managing relationships and strategies. And while there is a desire within the organization to add more star power and stability to the lineup, Melvin played the matchups with the A’s and experienced managing against the platoon-oriented Giants first-hand the past two seasons as a foe in the NL West.
“When I set up my lineup card every day, it usually takes around 45 minutes or so,” Melvin said. “It always took over an hour to set it up against the Giants.
“I think the personnel here is terrific. I know we’re talking about making some moves and enhancing the team. But a couple years ago, this was a team that won 107 games and it’s operating the way it did then.”
On the subject of enhancing the team, the Giants are counting on Melvin to be what Zaidi deemed an “effective recruiter.”
The Giants should have about $80 million at their disposal before they hit the first luxury tax threshold. Asked about exceeding the $237 million limit, which comes with financial and draft penalties, Johnson, the club chairman, scoffed at the idea of exceeding it for more than an occasional year.
With Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jung-hoo Lee headlining the free-agent class, Melvin touted his past experience with Pacific Rim players, which includes Ichiro Suzuki, Kazuhiro Sasaki and Shigatoshi Hasagawa with the Mariners, Hideki Matsui with the A’s, and Yu Darvish and Ha-Seong Kim with the Padres.
Melvin has also managed some of the top domestic players in the free-agent class, including left-hander Blake Snell and third baseman Matt Chapman.
“We’ll see, right? Those are all pretty good players. We’d like to have every one of them,” Melvin said. “Financially, that’s a stretch. But all those guys will be talked about, and hopefully I do have an impact on that.”
Staring down the 10-year anniversary of their last World Series title, having only made the playoffs twice since and once in five years under Zaidi, the Giants believe Melvin is the man to right the ship. But, he said, he doesn’t feel any more pressure than usual.
“There’s always pressure,” Melvin said. “It’s more responsibility that I feel here more so than wherever I’ve been because of the fact that I grew up here. … The Giants are so synonymous with the city. San Francisco is the Giants and the Giants are San Francisco. I don’t think anybody understands that more than I do, and no one is going to be as responsible and caring and knows what this team means to the city. …
“The expectation is going to be to win here from Day One. We definitely have the resources to do it.”