SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Bob Melvin is managing in his 22nd Major League Baseball season. He does not rehearse the same speech before the first full-squad workout of spring training.
The moment requires a tailored message. Every team is unto itself. Every group of players has a unique hierarchy and blend of personalities. Some teams are coming off high-flying seasons and division championships. Some teams are projected for irrelevance before Memorial Day. Every team has a specific aspect or two — situational hitting, defense, base running — that went haywire the previous year and will be special points of emphasis. Some years, the clubhouse will be populated with veteran mercenaries who have heard every version of a camp-opening speech. Other years, the clubhouse is a romper room of rookies who hang on every word before they’re thrown into the fire.
So Melvin did what he always does before the San Francisco Giants’ first full-squad workout on Monday. He considered the message that his players needed to hear. And he jotted down a few talking points.
Then Buster Posey stood up in the clubhouse and addressed the players first. And as Melvin listened, he began the mental strikethroughs.
“I actually had to cross off a few things that I was going to say, because he touched on them,” Melvin said. “So we’re all kind of thinking the same things. But, you know, it’s about team here. And Buster was the ultimate team player for a star. The message was, ‘If we’re going to go where we want to go, we’ve got to do it together.’”
Whether the message came from the manager or the new president of baseball operations, the subtext came through loud and clear to everyone in the room: The Giants front office and the field staff are in full alignment whether it relates to roster building or player development or lineup formation or pitcher usage or specific expectations that must be set or how to create a confident and cohesive culture or the shared pride associated with putting on a San Francisco uniform.
(That pride was expressed in a video that Melvin requested from the club’s in-house production team: a montage of stirring highlights from Willie Mays to Willie McCovey to Barry Bonds to Posey to Tim Lincecum to the current group including Logan Webb and Matt Chapman.)
There is always room for dialogue and disagreement, of course. But when disagreement happens often enough to become a disconnect, when there is a philosophical rift that requires daily effort to bridge, it usually results in mixed messages and misunderstandings. And it becomes impossible to hide. Major league players are too perceptive to take a manager’s marching orders at face value.
So the most important message that the Giants players received Monday might have been what Melvin repeated to reporters a few minutes later: We’re all kind of thinking the same things.
The Giants, who are coming off an 80-82 season, have several areas to emphasize this spring. They need to play cleaner defense. They need more dependable innings from their rotation. They need to be better in situational at-bats and at manufacturing runs. They need to put more pressure on opposing starters. Ideally, they won’t wait until Sept. 19 to sweep their first road series.
They need to create an identity.
Last year’s team didn’t stand much chance of that. Melvin already was in the process of learning new personnel in his first season in San Francisco. Then in between exhibition games last spring, the Giants added a new designated hitter (Jorge Soler), a new third baseman (Chapman) and a new co-ace (Blake Snell). All of the additions looked swell on paper. And the Giants were only able to sign all three players by waiting out the market. But the effect was the same as if they’d procrastinated: The season turned out to be an all-nighter of a term paper that lacked cohesion and often was difficult to follow.
Jorge Soler underwhelmed after signing with the Giants last year, hitting just .240 with 12 homers in 93 games before being traded to the Braves. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
This season’s roster really could use a left-handed run producer and designated hitter. They have one lefty reliever on the 40-man roster. They play in one of baseball’s most rigorous divisions but their free-agent additions stopped after shortstop Willy Adames and future Hall of Fame pitcher Justin Verlander, leaving otherwise unimproved areas of the roster to be the responsibility of younger players from within the system.
They won’t be picked by most pundits or projection systems to be a playoff team. But internally, they should not be a team with an identity crisis again.
“I think it’s going to be a little bit different this year,” Melvin said. “We talked about what our identity is. What kind of team are we? We’ve got to be able to protect the baseball. We got to play clean. Our situational stuff’s got to be better. In our ballpark, typically the games are pretty close, and if we don’t beat ourselves, we understand that the little things matter. Develop instincts, run the bases better, all those things that we need to be that clean, fundamentally sound baseball team that shows up every day and plays a good, clean game. That’s what we’re looking to do.”
The Giants’ current front office leadership under Posey was determined to use free agency in a meaningful and targeted way — and to wrap up the process as early as possible — in order to avoid a repeat of last season. So instead of plugging a hole with a veteran on a three-year contract with an opt-out clause, they will trust that they have enough options among their current personnel who can step into meaningful roles. They might give away the platoon advantage more often. They might not be so quick to mine for advantages at the margins at the expense of roster continuity. Sure, they will make coaching and game-level decisions that will be informed by their analytics staff. But everything that Posey has said publicly points to a baseball group that will trust people above procedure.
It is difficult to get players to trust themselves when that trust isn’t bestowed upon them.
“A lot of the success in the past has been developed around homegrown players and sprinkled in with the right type of free agents,” Melvin said. “And I think that’s what Buster’s looking to do. We didn’t look to sign everybody, but we signed the guys that we feel are the right guys for here. And then we need to develop our younger players. Last year, if there’s any silver linings, a lot of these younger players developed to where this year will be different for them.”
It will be different for some of the veterans, too. Chapman is their unofficial captain after signing a six-year, $151 million extension last September, which gave him the long-awaited mental freedom to feel like a homeowner and not a renter. Chapman, who appears even fitter and stronger this spring, waited exactly until Nov. 1 before he reported to the minor league complex at Papago Park to begin his daily workouts.
Adames also stopped by the Arizona complex after signing his record-setting seven-year, $182 million contract, ostensibly to check out the Giants’ facilities and scope out houses in the Scottsdale area. He had intended to stay for a day or two, then return to the Dominican Republic for the remainder of the offseason. But he had such a good time hitting with younger teammates like Heliot Ramos, Luis Matos and Grant McCray that he stayed in his hometown of Santiago for just five days, packed all the stuff he’d need, then caught a flight back to Phoenix. (And while at home in the Dominican, he also made the 2 1/2-hour drive to the Giants’ academy so he and Camilo Doval could celebrate the Jan. 15 signing day with the organization’s newest cohort of international players.)
“That’s why I’ve been hanging out for the last month here,” Adames said. “I wanted to get that going early and create that bonding with the guys. Being here the last month has been key for me. The chemistry we’re building here is something special.”
The Giants expect that their one-third-of-a-billion-dollars investment in Chapman and Adames will buy them the best defensive left side of the infield in the major leagues. Along with Gold Glove catcher Patrick Bailey and the return of center fielder Jung Hoo Lee from shoulder surgery, some projection systems predict that the Giants will lead the major leagues in Defensive Runs Saved.
But they’ll need to be more productive at the plate, too. So Adames announced his presence in live batting practice on Monday when he hit a home run off Sean Hjelle. Most hitters track pitches on the first day in the box but Matos and Jerar Encarnacion, both of whom are coming off outstanding seasons in winter ball, took the bats off their shoulders and made some crisp contact.
Right-hander Landen Roupp was the first pitcher to take the mound at Scottsdale Stadium on Monday morning. Past the mound and huddled behind the screen, pitching coach J.P. Martinez was joined by Webb, Verlander and Robbie Ray — one of several early indications that the accomplished front of the Giants rotation will be actively guiding the young pitchers who will comprise the rest of the group.
The Giants might continue to lack high-wattage stars in their prime. There will be no way to slap a shine on another mediocre season. But this is not a group that is being asked to buy into a system. The Giants are being asked to buy into each other.
The core philosophy is nothing new or innovative: It takes a roster of team players to win a team game.
“I think that plays anywhere,” Melvin said. “It really does.”
(Top photo of Posey: Andy Kuno / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)
