A Tale of Two Managers

by Lincoln Mitchell

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NOTE - This article comes from Lincoln Mitchell's Substack page, Kibitzing with Lincoln . Please click HERE to follow Lincoln on Substack.

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The Giants decision to fire manager Bob Melvin at the end of the season was puzzling, but understandable. The team finished the season with 81 wins and 81 losses a good reflection of the very average team that they were. However, it is hard to blame the failure of the team to win a few more games and make the playoffs on Melvin. After all, this was a team that at the trading deadline swapped most of their bullpen and a very reliable outfielder for a handful of prospects.

I liked those trades at the time, and still do now. The collection of prospects the Giants received in exchange for Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval and Mike Yastrzemski, including Drew Gilbert, Jose Butto, Parks Harbor and Jesus Rodriguez, will likely contribute to the big league club in a meaningful way in the coming years. President of Baseball Operations Buster Posey made the right decision in assessing in late July that this was not the Giants’ year. However, a team that sells like that at the deadline cannot blame the manager when they miss the playoffs.

Over the course of these last two seasons, I have seen the Giants play several times, listened to many games on the radio, read countless game stories and had several ongoing conversations and text groups with fellow Giants fans. I cannot think of many, perhaps even any, occasions when after a Giants loss my friends or I blamed Melvin for decisions that cost them the game. He was not perfect, but generally made the right decision, as might be expected from an experienced manager and baseball man.

Melvin was a good manager who could not work magic on a team that had some real strengths, but some glaring weaknesses and could not produce at key moments. He should not be blamed for the Giants disappointing season. He was likely fired because Posey is seeking to remake the team and, not unreasonably, wants his person as manager. Melvin was a holdover from the Farhan Zaidi years, and that is what likely cost him his job.

The contrast between Melvin and Yankees manager Aaron Boone is striking. Boone led a team that was by most measures much better than the Giants to a 94-win season and an early exit from the playoffs. However, the Yankees defeat at the hands of the Blue Jays in the ALDS was not Boone’s fault. The Yankees lost that series because offensive contributors including Giancarlo Stanton, Trent Grisham and Cody Bellinger did not hit and ace Max Fried pitched terribly in his one start.

The regular season was a different story. Had the Yankees won one more game they would have won the division and clinched the home field advantage all through the playoffs. That may or may not have allowed them to play deeper into October, but it would not have hurt. That regular season came on the heels of a World Series that Boone singularly mismanaged. The Dodgers were the better team, but a better manager, think Bruce Bochy for example, would have been able to get the Yankees past the Dodgers in that World Series.

In fairness to Boone, managers have far less control over major decisions than they did a generation or two ago. There is no room in today’s game for master tacticians like Earl Weaver or Billy Martin. Most front offices have a substantial amount of input over things like day-to-day starting lineups, which pitchers can be used on a given day and for how many pitches, when players get rest and the like. Nonetheless, there are decisions for which the manager is still responsible. Moreover, managers can set a tone for the team and employ various tactics to get the team or players out of slumps. There is little evidence that Boone is good at any of those things.

There are also, in almost every game, moments when the manager, despite preparations and plans by the front office, has to make a choice. This gets to what is so puzzling about the Yankees manager. Aaron Boone played twelve years in the big leagues, just completed his eighth year at the helm of the Yankees, is the brother, son and grandson of big league players, the son of a big league manager and still has a feel of the game comparable to a boy who was just given a Strat-O-Matic set for his eleventh birthday.

Successful managers have always used the best data available to them, but have also drawn on feel, instinct, hunch, or whatever you want to call it, honed by years of studying, playing or observing the game. Knowing a pitcher’s platoon splits is valuable, but so is knowing when a pitcher has lost the strike zone, or alternately is cruising along and should remain in the game. Boone seems consistently oblivious to those kind of considerations.

It is in some karmic sense unjust that Melvin was fired and Boone will almost certainly be back ensuring the Yankees underperform again in 2026, but this also tells us something about the two team’s front office.

Buster Posey, somehow unsatisfied with a Hall of Fame career and three World Series championships as a player is aggressively trying to build the only franchise that has ever employed him into a top tier contender again. He has been aggressive in making moves during his year running the team . In addition to firing the manager and his deadline trades, Posey signed a top free agent, Willy Adames, before the 2025 season and traded for slugger Rafael Devers during the regular season.

The Yankees continue to be run by Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman who, while making some very good player moves, have signaled their complacency by sticking with a manager who, at best, is in way over his head. The Giants are still a few years away from a deep playoff run, but under Posey’s leadership the curve is in the right direction. Meanwhile in the Bronx, the grift goes on.