More on Melvin

Well, the All Star break is here, as the Diamondbacks finished their road trip at 6-3, leaving them at 43-45.

First let's go over that Bob Melvin re-signing. My initial reaction is that I don't like Melvin. I hate the way he's handled pitching. Last year, Bob Melvin was in the top five in "slowest hooks" when it came to getting a pitcher. He tends to over use his relief pitchers. His lineup building process has been at times, incredibly flawed. Examples of this are batting Hudson and Clayton in the two hole in the last two years on a regular basis. Leaving Counsell with a fading OBP in the leadoff spot for the last month also should be called into question. His handling of Jackson last year and the beginning of this year should raise big red flags, especially with a team as loaded with top positional players as our farm system. However, I wouldn't say Bob is to blame for everything that has gone wrong in the last year and a half with this team. And I'm definately not going to say Melvin is a GOOD manager.
From my understanding though, our current General Manager, Josh Byrnes is a lot more active with the on-field management of the team than our previous GM was. It's been reported that Byrnes and Melvin have a good working relationship. If Byrnes plays a more active role in keeping Melvin's faults to a minimum, then I think this will good for the team. In this regards, our current General Manager/Manager would be reminisent of Billy Beane/Ken Macha. Beane makes most of the big decision regarding player personal, roster management, et cetera, and Macha pretty much follows orders and does what he's told. A flipside of a Bad Gm/Manager pairing was Paul Depodesta and Jim Tracy the last two years with the Dodgers. That situation didn't exactly end well for either of the two, mostly because they had a poor working relationship(and a boatload of injuries to the team).

In summary, I don't think this is an outright bad move to resign Bob melvin for another two years, but I don't think this is the best move the Diamondbacks could make. I would have like to see this done during the offseason, but I'm OK with this move.


Up Next: Looking forward