Visits: 2
“He’s lying,” Kelley said. “He’s such a chick flick guy.”
All of this tested Melvin’s commitment to Oakland last November.
Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman, after dismissing Joe Girardi as manager, called Billy Beane, his counterpart with the Athletics, to ask for permission to interview Melvin, who had recently been given a one-year extension through 2019. The Yankees, stacked with a talented roster that reached the brink of the World Series last season, presented an intriguing possibility.
Beane asked Melvin if he wanted to pursue the job.
“Only if I’m not looked at long-term here, then yes, I would want to,” Melvin recalled saying. He then spoke to the Athletics owner John Fisher. “I didn’t get any assurances, but I said, ‘Look, if I’m valued for the long term, this is where I want to be,’ and he intimated that was the case. I’m very happy in Oakland.”
There have been no contract extensions beyond 2019, but Beane and Melvin say it is business for later, after this season.
As the manager’s role, across baseball, has evolved into more of a conduit — between the front office and the players and news media — more of Melvin’s contemporaries are being replaced with younger managers with less experience. The trend has continued in recent weeks, with Jeff Banister of Texas, John Gibbons of Toronto, Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels and Paul Molitor of Minnesota being pushed out.
“Baseball has become very top-down,” Beane said of a trend that began with the publication of the book “Moneyball.” “We’re more involved than we’ve ever been, but Bob has been open-minded to the way the game has changed. His first exposure to analytics really was when he came to Oakland.”
It should be little surprise, then, that the A’s on Wednesday night will start a reliever, Liam Hendricks, to pitch one inning before giving way to a parade of pitchers.