Melvin looks ahead, touts 'newness' of 2022 Padres

PEORIA, Ariz. -- Bob Melvin summed up his first Spring Training as Padres manager rather succinctly on Wednesday morning.

"There's a lot of newness," said Melvin, speaking with the media from Minor League camp in Peoria. "A lot of unknowns."

Newness and unknowns -– that’s the best way to describe where things stand at Padres camp this month. Melvin is entering his first season with the Padres after he spent 11 years at the helm in Oakland. His coaching staff is an eclectic blend brought in from across the sport, with few holdovers. Newness, indeed.

As for the unknowns -- that staff is still eagerly awaiting its chance to get to work with what Melvin called "a very talented team." With Major League Baseball’s ongoing lockout, Melvin is limited in what he can do, as contact with players on the 40-man roster is prohibited.

In the meantime, Melvin is taking in Minor League Spring Training somewhat passively, while the Padres' player development staff runs the show. On Wednesday, an understated Melvin watched an intrasquad scrimmage from the other side of the fence. He makes it to the back fields a few times each week, but does little to make his presence known.

Instead, Melvin's focus is on his own big league coaching staff. Many of those coaches have been in Arizona for months, and they’ve been meeting regularly -- getting to know each other and planning big league camp.

"It's a diverse staff in that there's different ages, different experience levels, different mindsets," Melvin said. "This time has been good for us. I feel like it's a staff that can hit you from different levels. Old-school guys, new-school guys -- we can learn from each other. We already have. ... It's a staff that can hit you a bunch of different ways, and hopefully that resonates with the players."

Prior to the lockout, Melvin interacted with several of those players via phone and a few of them at Petco Park in November.

"My job will be, as much as anything, to get to know everybody as much on a personal level as a professional level," Melvin said. "Let my coaches do the coaching, and try to get to know everybody as well as I can."

The Padres made a splash by hiring Melvin away from the A’s in October, after San Diego parted ways with Jayce Tingler following a disappointing finish to the 2021 season.

Melvin -- a three-time Manager of the Year Award winner who helmed four consecutive winning seasons in Oakland before his departure -- said he’d prefer not to spend much time dwelling on the Padres' collapse last season.

“I don’t really want to divulge what my opinion of that was,” Melvin said. “I mean, it's a very talented team. Probably the way they looked at it is that they underachieved last year. That's my guess, is that that's pretty unanimous amongst the guys. More than anything, we're moving forward, not going to look too much at the past."

Moving forward has been the theme in San Diego ever since mid-October, when Melvin arrived.