Morning everyone and happy Friday!<\/p>\n
News broke yesterday that a familiar face will be rejoining the Athletics. It\u2019s not anyone that\u2019ll take the field but his presence is invaluable in a different way. We\u2019re welcoming back of course former manager Bob Melvin, who will be taking on a Special Advisory role with the team he managed for 10+ seasons:<\/p>\n
Welcome back Bob! The return of BoMel is much welcomed for a young A\u2019s squad that is looking to take that next step forward. While none of the players that he managed with the Athletics are around anymore, the young crop that the A\u2019s have currently surely know the history of Melvin with the franchise. When Melvin speaks, players shut up and listen because he\u2019s been around this game longer than most of them have been alive. BoMel, as he\u2019s affectionally known, was a players\u2019 coach during his time donning the Green & Gold and he won Manager of the Year in both 2012 and 2018, two of the most memorable seasons in recent A\u2019s history. Overall he went 853-764 while managing our A\u2019s and every player he coached had nothing but roses for him.<\/p>\n
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The Palo Alto native is the second-winningest manager in franchise history (behind of course Connie Mack), but Melvin exited unceremoniously from the team after the 2021 season. That was the offseason the A\u2019s began their tear down of the roster and, while he was still technically under contract, both team and Melvin decided that a fresh start for both sides was in the best interest of everyone involved. He had no desire to oversee another years-long rebuild and he ended up going down south to manage the win-now San Diego Padres for a couple seasons before returning to the Bay Area as the manager of the rival Giants, which was a bit of a gut punch to us A\u2019s fans. He lasted just two seasons there though and was surprisingly canned this offseason by Giants president Buster Posey after posting a 161-163 record.<\/p>\n
While Melvin oversaw six playoff squads, advancing deep into the postseason always proved to be a challenge for him. The A\u2019s lost five of six of those series in the first round, only winning the 2020 Wild Card series over the Chicago White Sox but then immediately losing to the Houston Astros in the next round. His squads did put up some tough battles against the Detroit Tigers early on in his time as manager but his postseason record of 7-13 isn\u2019t great and he was 0-3 in Wild Card games as manager of the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not all of the context though. Melvin repeatedly worked within the restraints of having one of the lowest payrolls in the league and still managed to coax plenty of production out of random names and other nobodies that had been forgotten by the league. The fact that Melvin was able to put together multiple playoff rosters while dealing with an absent front office and a lack of funds from the owner for upgrades is a testament to the kind of baseball mind he has on his head. This is a huge get for the A\u2019s organization as a whole, though fans may not exactly see the impact he\u2019ll have.<\/p>\n
Reportedly Melvin is preparing to take on a role that allows him to help both the front office and players. During Spring Training Melvin is going to be around so keep an eye out and you might spot him! He\u2019ll be watching the games, giving pointers to the players, and assessing the current crop along with the front office and scouts. He won\u2019t be among an unfamiliar group of coaches either as many know him or even worked with him in the past. That includes current manager Mark Kotsay, who was on Melvin\u2019s staff for years before taking over for him in 2022.<\/p>\n
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Once the regular season gets underway though BoMel will be hanging out down in the minor leagues with the top prospects coming up through the system. That\u2019ll be a new experience for him as he\u2019s been a major league coach for the past 27 years and hasn\u2019t been able to see minor leaguers much up close before they arrive. Melvin will be a key voice for General Manager David Forst when it comes to promotions for those players. If they get his voice of approval, it\u2019ll be hard to keep them down long.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot,\u201d Melvin said, of returning to the A\u2019s. \u201cI\u2019m just going to try to help out however I can. The easy part for me is the familiarity with the people in the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melvin is going to slide right back in almost like he never left. After a few years of bouncing around, returning to a familiar team in the A\u2019s will be a breath of familiar air for him. And the A\u2019s are all the luckier to have such an important baseball mind around.<\/p>\n
Have a great weekend everyone! Baseball is back!<\/p>\n
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A\u2019s CoverageMLB News and Interest:Best of X:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not too late for Kotsay to join in on the WBC fun:<\/p>\n
Possible closer versus starting first baseman:<\/p>\n
We would all more than welcome that. Needs to figure out lefties first:<\/p>\n
Higher hopes for the left-handers coming up:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morning everyone and happy Friday! News broke yesterday that a familiar face will be rejoining the Athletics. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,1865,6595,49,53,4813,54,4810,8887,4,3226,459,63,18,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-583253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-bob-melvin","11":"tag-buster-posey","12":"tag-chicago-white-sox","13":"tag-detroit-tigers","14":"tag-hogan-harris","15":"tag-houston-astros","16":"tag-lawrence-butler","17":"tag-manager","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-mlb-athletics","20":"tag-nick-kurtz","21":"tag-oakland-athletics","22":"tag-san-diego-padres","23":"tag-texas-rangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116104208280618672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}