Firing Time
Afternoon KNBR guys were discussing this: If you don’t want to talk about what Melvin has done to lose his job how bout we discuss what he has done to keep it? Buster gives this ghost an extension, for no fucking reason whatsoever, and the team goes into a tailspin. Literally. They’ve been the worst team in baseball since he did this. What has Melvin done to deserve AN KEEP this esteemed job?
I’ve said this many times before, Buster’s biggest hole in his game is his loyalty to his friends. You can’t do that when you’re the man in charge. Tough decisions have to get made all the time. And you can’t have them colored by friendship.
BoMel has to go…….
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Who tagged Melvin with that shitty nickname? I guess it does fit him though.
I think he came here with it. Totally suits and sucks. One of those combos like Flo-Jo. I like Chuck’s “Motel6”…
B/R lists his nickname as “BoMel” so none of the wiseguys here can be blamed for that one…
Yeah I knew he came with it and it always sounded lame to me. Just wondered if whoever gave it to him, did it because they thought he was lame. Maybe he gave it to himself, that would fit.
Dennis Lin in Athletic: “Entering Monday, San Diego’s pitching staff had the majors fourth lowest ERA (3.63) and lowest relief ERA (3.04).” Giants used to own that last stat.
Also in that column is note about use of iPads in dugout filming opposing pitchers, re: a story about Red Sox filming closer Suarez who might have been tipping pitches based on how much hand is showing in glove. Padres themselves were aware of what he’s been doing for long time and admit such filming goes on all the time by them too.
Lin quoted Suarez himself in the column, saying pitchers use it too. “More than anything, it’s just seeing what the game is dictating and how guys are batting throughout the game and seeing what pitches they are swinging and missing at. That’s really what we’re using iPads for.”
The only use of the IPad for Giants hitters is when they all look at theirs latest strikeouts on garbage swings in the dugout AB’s and stare at Pat the Useless Bat hitting coach who just shrugs his head..
I’ll always believe there’s no reason to fire any baseball manager unless he’s doing obvious, irrefutably stupid or evil shit, but Buster may as well get this ritual over with. If Willy Adames decides to hit 32 HRs next year and earn his fucking salary, I’m certainly not going to give the next manager any credit for that.
speculation across blogosphere about Mark Hallberg. Last time he managed was 2019 for Salem-Kizer in A ball 2019 before Kapler added him to Giants coaching staf. Also was college teammate of…Buster Posey.
I remember the hype over the Royals a decade ago, the small ball team that didn’t K. We now have the Brewers, who run the bases well and believe in each other. My post-season joy will be watching them get eliminated.
The Giants pitching is still on par with the Brewers and Padres. SF has, however, given up 20 more unearned runs than either of those two teams. The Giants are second in the NL in errors, with Chapman, Adames, Ramos, and Bailey leading the way. An offense that was simply closer to league average and a defense that didn’t give away those 20 runs would mean a run differential closer to San Diego’s and a still viable playoff contender.
good stuff.
earned runs still carry some weight and offer actual insight . Like BAs, I guess.
Yeah, if you have a good ERA over a sufficient number of innings, it’s still pretty likely the other contextual numbers will say you’re doing a good job. At a team level, the Giants ERA is 3.66 and the FIP is 3.65. I’d guess a plus BA commingles with a below average OPS a little more frequently, although again a good team-wide BA probably means you also have at least an OK SP and OBP. As far as the Heyman “insight” goes, there’s no reason to ever use BA to evaluate a team’s offense. There are more than a few examples of teams with mediocre BAs, high SP, and decent OBPs who’ve been in the upper tier of league scoring. A high collective BA may characterize how your offense functions, but OPS tells you if it’s any good.
yeah whip and ops and often war are usually my starting points.
Padres only a game back of LA. wonder what would happen to Roberts if they melted down and got bounced out of playoffs early, one year after winning first full season title since 1988?
I think the Dodgers front office thinks of managers pretty much the way I do. They’re interchangeable pieces who operate within a very narrow tactical range. Why bother with the disruption of change?
every Melvin employer probably felt the same. In Oakland, the cheap asses embraced him for a decade to no great PS success–much as LA and Roberts. SD apparently expected or demanded more.
I could be persuaded to think differently if anyone showed me a handful of illogical decisions BoMel made that contributed to his playoff teams’ losses.
2013 first round loss to the tigers offered at least a handful iirc. But an a’s fan friend took me to game one and made the best arguments against Melvin thereafter so my r isn’t crystal clear. Relying too heavily on rookie Sonny gray was obvious. But that problem had its roots in the roster, too. Next year, Beane tried to cure the roster problem with mid snd late season overweight moves, which Melvin brokered into a weird WC loss to KC. The two were born to fuck up a team in tandem and they did.
I’ll admit my bar for “illogical” is very high (or is it low?) when it comes to baseball decisions. Want to let the hot hitting lefty who’s never done well against left handed pitchers bat against one in a crucial situation when you’ve got a lefty masher, like, say, I know . . . Austin Slater(!) on the bench, you’re off the hook in my book, even after demonstrating your faith in said hot lefty hitter fucks the team. After all, you’ve won the bigger psychological game that will surely pay off later, at least until it doesn’t.
in that WC game pairing a pitcher who couldn’t hold runners on with a catcher who couldn’t throw runners out was as the say pivotal
logic? Aristotelian logic? Dialectical? Or some sort of arcane baseball statistics based bean counting logic? Probably the latter, right? So is that the managers job, to play by those rules and hope? Shake hands and pat shoulders?
Ok, I looked up the game. Norris had a 25% CS rate, Soto a 26%.
I glanced at Norris 2014 stats and saw 17% CS. This reminds me of arguments I had with opposing counsel who said “im not persuaded. “.
See example above — doesn’t seem arcane to me!
I used their lifetime stats, but thanks for the extra detail.
kc ran wild. Thats what happened. Iirc. Your examples suggest that Melvin almost won despite his gaffes by sheer luck. And any luck based logic is so arcane as to be mystical. Add prayer to shaking hands and patting shoulders.
How about: Common sense decision making framework available to any fan who’s watched more than a few games?
“The score was still 2-1 when the Royals came to bat in the bottom of the third inning. As the inning began, the A’s had a new catcher. Starting catcher Geovany Soto had injured his thumb and was replaced by Derek Norris.”
I mentioned the pitchers too. And the running wild went on for the rest of the game. Your luck based logic is mystical. Maybe you’re right but I agree with everyone else who thinks managers and coaches need to do more to succeed follow simple rules and pray to the gods of randomness.
maybe you can cherry pick a snippet from wikipedia to apparently defend the pitching choices, too, but fact remains KC stole seven bases in the game on mismanaged batteries and got caught only once. Two of those steals resulted in crucial runs: one runner stole third and scored on a sac fly in the bottom of the ninth (and i’m overlooking the sac bunt that moved him to third) to send the game to extras; and another runner scored after stealing second in the twelfth, to win the game.
I responded to a specific example you provided. It looks like the As had 2 catchers on the playoff roster. Melvin started the back-up Soto, perhaps to mitigate Lester’s yips and susceptibility to steals. The back-up got injured. I’m not sure what else he was supposed to do to “manage the batteries.”
Norris was a notoriously bad first team catcher wasn’t he? Beane really fucked that up. Perhaps. Melvin did his best to keep him out of the WC game, knowing what would happen. I guess. The eventual game winning steal of second occurred when Melvin called for a pitch out and Norris dropped it. Melvin did his best.
And yet Norris led the league in total CS along with a 35% rate for SD in 2015 . . . only to be followed by a year in which he gave up the most total steals with a crappy 20% CS rate. 🙂 Never thought I’d be looking at or discussing Derek Norris stats.
Chuck asked about the result of Swift’s 22 groundball game:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA198805280.shtml
wow thanks James, other local connections (Claudell Jack Clark) in that one. Rickey at age 29; who knew he would keep playing into his 40s?
Claudell and Clark were both firm litigation clients. Agents used to get away with larceny.
one smart tweeter quickly analyzed bomel’s post season records with several talented teams (and just a bit more luck) and argued that he’s mismanaged the Giants similarly. Extending him does look like Buster’s one self inflicted bust.
I emphatically disagree with the notion that baseball managers are worthless. Worse, that they don’t deserve some credit for a player or team’s success. Every sport requires someone to lead/make decisions; or, for that matter, any organization requires leadership . . . Seriously, give me one example of a sport (team or individual), where that team or person doesn’t benefit from a manager, coach, nutritionist, etc.???
Just my personal experience with work, I have had outstanding experiences with managers or department heads, where they didn’t have squat to do with my job (occupation), nor how to do it, but they inspired me to always give 100%. I recall an admiral I worked for at the postgraduate school in Monterey – where I literally saw grown men cry exiting his office (from the waiting room foyer) because they fucked up a job, inspection, or assignment. Likewise, this same man was quick to give an employee credit when they performed their job well. Loved working for him . . . and, I was on the receiving end of both his criticism and praise. Similarly, managers make other decisions that make a difference in an organization’s performance – sports, tech, military, etc., that’s why they pay them a salary.
I consider Melvin a poor manager. He doesn’t inspire anyone to be a better player. Worse, he looks the other way, when a coach doesn’t perform (see Williams). Same thing with players – always thinking about the “politics” of the situation. I have no doubt Buster will fire him before the start of next season.
Blade, I didn’t say they’re worthless. Someone needs to make day to day decisions and lead the team, and that person needs a certain level of baseball credibility that few people have. In my view, the decisions the manager makes usually have little to do with the outcome of any game, unless they patently run counter to the familiar logic of the game at large, i.e., they’re outright stupid. Short of that, failure is mostly about insufficient skill and bad luck. As for the ability to inspire, I’ll just say that leading and coordinating groups of employees with highly diverse skills, different jobs and motivations, ages etc. to perform well in a corporate setting, for example, doesn’t seem entirely analogous to managing a team of similarly talented individuals playing a game that’s largely about who succeeds in a series of one on one competitions featuring a ball and bat and a whole lot of randomness.
Baseball is so different even from other major sports too. In basketball I can run plays designed for my best scorer to take most shots. No matter how good one hitter is, he has to wait his turn through 8 other guys and doesn’t get any more chances to perform than worst hitter in lineup. Pitching and roster construction around it has become so much more complicated in era of 5 and dive and openers.
Advancement of training pitching year round seems so far ahead of hitters now. Despite all the injuries there seems to be endless supply of hard throwing replacements at the ready. idk how hitters can respond and push back.
mlb.com lineup shows Fitz starting in RF batting 8th vs. LH SP.
lets hope Bomel and the coaches have sacrificed beeves and lambs sufficient to sway the gods on olympus
James and Willie, while both of you made some good points, I still disagree with much of what you said. I have heard both of you complain about Melvin’s decisions not once, not twice, but numerous times.
A baseball manager is far from useless. They are the field general, responsible for a wide range of decisions that directly influence the outcome of games. While a general manager builds the roster, the field manager is the one who puts it all into action.
A manager’s importance can be seen in several key areas:
The results do ultimately matter. Melvin can only manage what he has been given to work with. Unfortunately the roster Posey put together has not materialized the way he expected and I put most of this on the players-Posey has already traded 3 of them away for prospects that might come to fruition. I think that’s part of what he has seen so far in his first year, that the organization is in dire need of more of influx of talented younger players such as do not presently exist. He has quite a bit of work to do this off season to cover existing holes in the roster of position players.
The gap between Ray’s ERA and FIP just narrowed.
So has the gap between me and Bellvue…
If it’s full, this place might be an option!
https://www.untappedcities.com/abandoned-veterans-memorial-kings-park-psychiatric/
I’m wide open…
City connect jerseys are growing on me. Like a melanoma…
what the fuck is Krukow talking about?
arms are stronger now in the dog days when they’re tired and weak?
The K-Hey Kid strikes (out) again…
I’m with Blade this whole Coaching Staff needs to be fired except for the only guy who knew what’s he doing all year in Pitching Coach JP Martinez who’s been brilliant imo molding a solid pen and with only Webb,Ray and a promising Roupp before he was shut down.This Staff can only do so much and now they’re overworked cause they know they have to be precise knowing this team Can’t Hit, can’t field ( tons of errors,can’t play fundamental baseball at all..
And yes when this dreaded season is over Posey needs to drop his loyalty crush and Fire the Staff and don’t even think of hiring your college roommate Mark Haliberg as your manager lol who what managed a team for a season at Salem 6 years ago? He can’t even coach at 1st base, CLEAN HOUSE!!
Lee gets down the line like he’s running from Godzilla…
79 pitches. Poor baby…
‘Cause little Willy, Willy won’t get hits
But you can’t push Willy ’round
Willy won’t go, try tellin’ everybody but, oh no…
I just checked and I still have my copy of “Sweet’s Biggest Hits” – whew!
I d be pissed off if I was Cortes! 79 pitches one out to qualify for a win, and it’s the Giants which should of been a lock for the W..so now the reliever can vulture the win instead..
The original vulture…
Dom looks gummied up…
Dom is a hitting machine.
Yeah Regan in 1966&68 for the dogpile was certainly a vulture machine along with Pirates Elroy Face
They sandwiched Perranoski’s insane 1963…
K sera sera…
April obviously was a dream or April Fools day lasted all month for the Giants.
When streams were ripe and filled with rain…
Somebody from the front office should sent the EMS team down into the Giants dugout to check whether all the players have a pulse. They seem to be in a collective coma…
Amazingly, Adames BA is more putrid than Crappy (.225 vs .229).
Running out of adjectives to describe how bad this is. Here’s one:
Other than Schmitt this game, the players appear to be completely moribund. They had hits, but as usual, then Pffft, a tidy 11Ks.
Seems reasonable to assume there have to be some visible consequences in management sooner or later from this horrendous free fall. How can there not be? Now 12 losses in last 13 home games, 7-19 in last 26 home games, players phoning it in…
Dats all folks.
Based on the end of that flick, no doubt Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth could hit with RISP …
Don’t forget Brandy!
No doubt…