The Astros won it for Dusty.
Will the Padres win it for Bob?
Dusty Baker's first World Series title lifted Bob Melvin ever closer to an MLB ladder's top rung. Melvin's now second among active managers with the most games and no World Series titles. And if Manny Machado and Joe Musgrove needed more incentive to win it all in 2023, there's this: First on the same list is Buck Showalter, the ear detective who messed with Musgrove in the playoffs. Don't let Buck beat Bob to the trophy.
Until his Astros won last week, Baker was 10th all time in career games managed, putting him atop the job's "no trophy" list. Astros personnel mobbed Baker, 73, when a flyball ended Game 6 and lifted the Mets' Showalter and Melvin — 19th and 28th in games — to first and second among current managers who've not clutched the trophy.
San Diegans will recognize the bronze medalist: Rockies manager Bud Black, a local who's 53rd all time in games managed.
Remember the toothpick-chewing candidate Padres CEO Sandy Alderson and staff interviewed for Bruce Bochy's job in late 2006? You probably don't. As baseball insiders whispered Black had the job — Black's first as a manager — Baker's candidacy registered barely a ripple.
Baker's third World Series team changed his luck and further burnished his reputation as the sport's most beloved manager among players and coaches.
Though Showalter, Melvin and Black have piloted no team to the World Series, the much better definition of their careers is their A-plus longevity. Most managers today don't stick around if they lack these traits: a gift for relating to a wide range of personalities, intelligence across a broad spectrum, consistent behavior, rare stamina and attention to detail.
Alligator skin is useful, too.
As Showalter, 66, heads toward his 22nd managerial season, having directed 3,231 games, Melvin, 61, and Black, 65, approach their 20th and 16th seasons.
Give Melvin the edge: he leads the trio in winning percentage (.516) and playoff berths (eight).
Joining the Padres, he answered to someone he barely knew — President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller, whose contract that runs through 2026 stamps him as The Man.
Color their first journey as promising, while understanding that pitching health — a strength for the 2022 Padres — is fickle.
Preller provided Melvin perhaps the best pitching staff in Padres history after the franchise's previous three teams ran out of reliable arms much too soon. He improved the roster in August, one summer after allowing the rotation to wither on the vine. The team's nucleus of Machado, Jake Cronenworth and Ha-Seong Kim outperformed the big-league norm at their respective positions.
Arriving with a halo over his head affixed by dozens of baseball men who'd worked with him, Melvin provided the franchise a needed grownup presence as a former big-league catcher who'd managed the Moneyball A's for 11 years.
Importantly, he had the chops to educate Preller in ways that Preller's previous managerial hires could not.
Melvin didn't profile as a yes man to Preller, and Padres players knew it.
His move to a six-man rotation panned out, as the starters drove a successful first half to the season in forging a win-loss cushion that held up. The bullpen, rested by the starters, thrived late in the season and in October. When Melvin lit into his team for the first time, not until September, the players responded with a timely hot streak.
The Padres' full winning season (89-73) was the first under Preller, and the postseason berth was the franchise's first off 162 games since Bochy's final San Diego team edged the Dodgers for the West title in 2006.
Among Melvin's playoff victims were Showalter's Mets, who'd won 101 games and had the home-field edge.
There's no point in pulling back now. The core talent warrants pushing for short-term upgrades to a team that most oddsmakers place among the top eight to win the 2023 World Series. For all their successes of October, the Padres still came seven victories short of the needed 13 postseason victories and one playoff win shy of the 1998 team's run.
If the Padres are to enjoy the breakthrough like the Astros and Baker enjoyed on a November night in Houston, it may take Juan Soto reprising one of his big seasons, Melvin not just maintaining his bona fides but learning lessons (see, Josh Hader not facing Bryce Harper) and Preller pulling off more moves like last offseason's additions of pitchers Nick Martinez and Robert Suarez. In baseball if you're not moving ahead, you're falling behind.
