Column: Bay Area returns favor for Bruce Bochy by sending Bob Melvin to Padres

The Bay Area owed San Diego a big baseball favor.

Fifteen years later, nothing less than a very solid favor has arrived in return.

In a surprise, Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin is leaving his longtime employer to manage the Padres.

The surprise 15 years ago was Padres manager Bruce Bochy leaving his longtime employer to manage the San Francisco Giants.

Just as the Giants were fortunate to land the steady Bochy, who was coming off his second consecutive National League West-winning season as part of an 11-year tenure that produced four West crowns and one World Series appearance, the Padres are fortunate to hire the stable Melvin, whose 11 Athletics teams combined for a .528 win rate and six playoff berths.

No, no no — this isn’t a prediction that Melvin will match Bochy by leading the Padres to three World Series titles.

Organizations, more so than managers, win trophies.

The current Padres organization, riding a franchise-record streak of 10 consecutive losing full seasons — eight under current ownership — has a lot of proving to do.

Melvin can do only so much, but his Oakland tenure suggests he’ll fill the apparent leadership void that surfaced amid the Padres’ recent summer swoon and — no less importantly — will make apt use of data that has become increasingly crucial to lineup and game management.

Far more credentialed for the job than A.J. Preller’s previous managerial hires Andy Green and Jayce Tingler, Melvin navigated the daily grind for some 1,600 games inside one of MLB’s most efficient franchises.

He maintained a strong working relationship with Billy Beane, a challenging, brainy and volatile boss who hired him as Oakland’s interim manager in 2011.

“He’s one of the most prepared managers in the game,” said an active MLB manager who asked not to be identified in return for providing a scouting report. “I’ve managed against him for years and it’s a continual chess match in-game. He’s a calm presence but always will defend his team.

“He isn’t the most aggressive manager in the game,” said the manager, “but he will generally always do the right thing to put his team in a good position to win. Players love him and it can easily be seen from the other dugout.”

So Preller, who seeks his first full winning season as a GM, a job he assumed in August 2014, has hit no less than a gap-shot double with this hire.

Melvin could’ve chosen to stay with the A’s, who in June picked up his 2022 option. His team went 86-76 this year, the franchise’s fourth consecutive winner.

But with the A’s apparently headed toward a heavy retooling if not a full rebuild, the Padres roster and farm system Preller assembled may give Melvin a better shot at contending for a World Series trophy in the next few years.

So the Melvin hire is both a stroke of good luck and a victory achieved by Preller and the Peter Seidler-Ron Fowler ownership group.

“The Padres really did an incredible job of getting access to him,” said the active manager who praised Melvin.

Catchers often make for good managers, because they must simultaneously draw upon scouting reports yet read the game and make fast adjustments. More so than any player, they have one cleated foot in the past (data, scouting) and the other in the present (an ever-changing ballgame in which they are shin-guard deep). World Series-winning managers of the wild-card era include former catchers Bochy, Joe Torre, Mike Scioscia, Bob Brenly, A.J. Hinch, Ned Yost and Joe Girardi.

Melvin, who turned 60 on Thursday, joins Bochy as the only former big league catcher to become the Padres’ full-time manager (Rod Barajas, a former catcher, went 1-7 as the interim successor to Green in 2019; John McNamara caught in the minors). As with Bochy in the fall of 2006, when the boss who inherited him, Sandy Alderson, invited him to shop his services, Melvin’s exit comes with one year left on his contract.

Melvin figures to hold the job longer than Steve Boros, the only other manager to go directly from managing the A’s to managing the Padres. Boros logged one season in San Diego, going 74-88 in 1986.

Will the Melvin Era approximate the Padres record of former A’s manager Dick Williams?

In four years under Williams, who’d led Oakland to World Series titles in 1972 and ’73, the Padres of 1982-85 had no losing seasons and won an NL pennant.

Padres fans would welcome that kind of success. And so would Melvin, who has the most playoff appearances (seven) of any manager not to reach the World Series.