Giants come to grips with another end-of-season firing after Bob Melvin ousted originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — The timing was odd, and looking back, it makes even less sense.
At 1:05 p.m. on July 1, the Giants sent out a press release announcing that they had picked up the 2026 option on manager Bob Melvin. The lead quote in the release was from president of baseball operations Buster Posey, who said later that day he had spent months watching Melvin closely and weeks having internal discussions about whether to make the move.
“We believe he’s the right person to continue guiding this team forward,” Posey said that day, even though the Giants had lost six of seven.
Three months later, the Giants sent out another press release. Melvin had been fired, with Posey saying this time that a change of leadership was needed.
It is an unfortunate end for Melvin, a Bay Area native who viewed this as his dream job and ideally his final MLB job. But, more than anything, it’s a bad look for everyone involved.
At the end of the 2023 season, Gabe Kapler was fired. A year later, it was Farhan Zaidi, with Posey taking over. This time, it’s Melvin. There were plenty of reasons why each move was made, but still, this is a stunning stretch for an organization that wraps itself in “Forever Giant” talk and had incredible continuity while winning three titles.
“It’s not ideal, right?” Posey said Monday. “It’s definitely not ideal. But unfortunately, we talked about it a lot, what the standards are for the Giants, and we have high standards and I hold myself to those same standards. I understand fully the position that I’m in now.”
The front office is not blameless, and Posey knows it. He hoped to boost morale by picking up Melvin’s option, but it became an expensive mistake. He made decisive moves in acquiring Rafael Devers and selling at the deadline, but the Giants also ran out of pitching, and looking back at the offseason, it’s clear they put too much faith in internal options at several positions. They certainly need to be more active with the roster this winter and build more depth.
This is also a tough day for many in the clubhouse. Ultimately, they’re the ones taking the field, and for a second time in three years, they have watched a manager get fired. Melvin was popular to the end, and it was a somber scene on Sunday afternoon as some players realized he would take the fall for their inconsistency on the field.
This all comes after more than a decade of stability under Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy, but now, the Giants have a streak of three straight years in which they either fired their manager or president of baseball operations.
Posey must know that there’s more work to be done behind the scenes. He has spent 12 months watching what goes on at every level of the organization, and he knows this wasn’t just about the manager. Something at Oracle Park just isn’t clicking.
“Without a doubt, you hope there can be consistency in these leadership positions,” he said Monday. “We’ve got to get back to a place where we’re getting in the playoffs, we’re making runs in the playoffs. That’s what our fan base deserves. That’s what the city deserves.
“When seasons don’t go the way you want them, it’s never one person’s fault. It’s never one group’s fault. But when they don’t go the way you want them, you can’t — in my opinion — sit there and say we’re going to come back and do the same thing that we did this year for the next year. Having said that, that’s part of why we landed where we landed.”
Zaidi hired Melvin in part because he was the opposite of Kapler, who had become unpopular by the end despite leading the Giants to 107 wins in 2021. Melvin is old school, and he brought along longtime coaches like Matt Williams and Ryan Christenson, who could not have been more different than the ones that were let go.
The Giants made a show of cutting back their analytics department, ignoring the fact that the rest of the good teams in their division, the Los Angeles Dodgers in particular, continue to expand. Multiple players said this season that it is one area where the team is lacking.
In retrospect, it’s clear there was a middle ground — and Stephen Vogt represented that. But the Giants played it safe, and they’re now paying for it. As they fell out of the race this year, Vogt — with a staff filled with former Kapler disciples — led a historic comeback in Cleveland.
Vogt once backed up Posey, who now will lead the search for his own hand-picked manager. It is a decision that most lead executives only get to make once, and Posey must get it right.
He is all-in with the core of this roster, and his choice must be strong enough to lead the Giants to the postseason in 2026. The next manager must also be someone who can grow with Posey and general manager Zack Minasian. The Giants don’t want to do this all again in two years. They have already done it far more often than expected.
The tradition at Oracle Park last decade was holding postseason games in October. This decade, they have held press conferences to explain a firing, and no matter what one might feel about the individual decisions, there’s no denying that, taken all together, it’s a bad look.
