Leaning on a bat next to the Giants spring training dugout at Scottsdale Stadium on Wednesday, manager Bob Melvin navigated the delicate process of explaining how things unraveled at the end in San Diego.
In 2022, the Padres — Melvin’s Padres — were a baseball rocketship, beating the 101-win Mets in New York, stunning the 111-win Dodgers and charging into the franchise’s first NCLS since 1998.
A season later, things crumbled and soured as a lineup loaded with marquee stars failed to perform in the clutch and discord between Melvin and President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller spilled out.
Despite the smoldering wreckage of missing the playoffs in the expanded wild-card era with the game’s third-highest payroll, it appeared everyone would patch the hull and row through the choppy water into Year 3.
“I was committed to coming back and so was A.J. in having me back, and it was (late owner) Peter (Seidler’s) wishes,” Melvin said. “After the season ended, I met A.J. at the spring training complex. We met to try and, you know, what our differences were, come to middle ground and move forward.
“That’s when he told me the Giants had called and asked permission (to interview). My initial reaction, I told him, ‘I don’t care. I’m coming back. I have a three-year commitment here and I’m coming back.’
“We started talking about some of the things going forward and it became apparent to both of us that there was still going to be some conflict.”
An inescapable reality began to take root.
“Me on a one-year contract, anything that went wrong, there was going to be drama again,” Melvin said. “There was tons of drama leading up to the end of the season, so how was that going to affect the team moving forward?”
One of those healthy-divorce things?
“I think so,” he said. “I think the misconception is that I just walked and wanted to walk and that wasn’t the case. But I do think, at the end of the day, it ended up better for everybody. The fans didn’t deserve to have to hear about that. The way they came out and supported that team was fantastic.”
If that sounds as if Melvin is side-stepping his role in things, from the tumultuous finish on the field to front-office communication, more of the conversation was coming.
“We didn’t get it done and I was the manager of the team,” Melvin said. “So I feel accountable and I understood why changes were made. I do. It took me a long time to get over that. And I can’t even say I’ve gotten over it.”
Melvin fully realized the off-the-charts potential of a team that came off a deep playoff run and added generational offensive player Juan Soto.
Those Padres, however, finished a baseball-worst 9-23 in one-run games and 2-12 in extra innings — areas in which the 2022 team shined. The plus-104 run differential last year was the most in a 162-game season by a team with fewer than 84 wins.
That wild dichotomy underscored the frustration at an inability to fix it.
If there was a button to push, nobody could find it.
“I certainly didn’t,” Melvin acknowledged. “I tried to remain consistent with what we accomplished the year before, how we did our pregames, how we did our meetings.
“When is the time to push the panic button? Maybe I didn’t know when.”
When the Padres suddenly found themselves swimming in stars, scooping up Soto and Xander Bogaerts to join Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr., finding harmonic balance proved tricky.
Swing too far in one direction and dent whatever made the team a competitive success in 2022? Wait too long to course adjust, until the season ebbed away?
“We tried to embrace it,” Melvin said. “In the end, we just couldn’t sustain anything. All that starts to play on you a little bit. Are we handling it wrong? At least it did for me. Should we try to do things wholesale differently based on the way we executed the year before?”
Melvin, for his part and without provocation, offered a particular regret.
“I pushed back (on Preller) and got cranky near the end,” he said. “I don’t feel good about that.”
Asked whether his short San Diego legacy leans more toward a historic run in 2022 or the massively underwhelming lap a season ago, Melvin paused.
Others will write that script.
“I don’t know,” said Melvin, who started in pro baseball in 1981. “That’s probably not a question for me. I hope the balance of it. It just shows you how quickly things can change. Probably as dramatic a two-year change as anything I’ve been through in baseball.”
One vivid moment remains cherished.
“Watching the reaction of the fans when we beat the Dodgers that night (to go to the NLCS), that’s about, other than winning a World Series, as special a thing as I’ve ever seen,” Melvin said. “That, I’ll never forget. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
So now, Melvin embraces a fresh start. Growing up in the Bay Area, playing for the Giants and managing the A’s left him with deep and personal connections.
He’s also worked with current Giants President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi when the latter was an assistant GM in Oakland.
“For me, it’s been pretty easy, starting with knowing Farhan,” Melvin said. “I always followed the Giants and the A’s, regardless where I was, being from the Bay Area. I’ve known several people in this organization before, so it’s probably been a little easier transition than maybe when I started in San Diego.”
The end came with Melvin’s admission that the buck stops somewhere, as they say.
“When you have those type of expectations and you don’t meet them, things tend to happen,” he said. “Sometimes baseball humbles you. We certainly got humbled.”
Now, it’s on to new chapters. For Melvin ... and the Padres.
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