Kurtenbach: Things are different for the 2024 SF Giants, and fans have noticed

SAN FRANCISCO — New Giants manager Bob Melvin couldn’t wait for his team’s home opener Friday.

First pitch might have been at 1:35 p.m., but he was at the ballpark at 6:30 a.m.

“There are very few days that get you kind of nervy like this,” Melvin said before the game. “There’s basically one in 162.”

After back-to-back seasons of boring play and mediocre results, the Giants organization hopes to keep that buzz going for the next 80 home games. Then, hopefully, for a few more games in the postseason.

Friday’s walk-off winner, with new third baseman Matt Chapman going first-to-home on a Thairo Estrada double in the bottom of the ninth to win 3-2, is an excellent home start.

But it’s important to remember that scope. Baseball is six months of play, day in, day out. The Giants might have entered Friday’s game coming off a sweep at the hands of baseball’s superteam — the rival Dodgers — and with only two wins on the season, but this team has the makings of a club that can make noise in the National League.

The fan base has noticed.

And then the team showed it Friday.

The Giants’ front office didn’t care for my assessment of Opening Day last season, when I said that the team had not done enough to bring fans back to the ballpark, evidenced by the undeniably (or so I thought) large swaths of empty seats.

I won’t take any credit for it, but the Giants made big moves this offseason — the kind they didn’t (or couldn’t) make in years past — and that nearly filled the ballpark on Friday for the first home game, despite some unseasonably cool temperatures.

(There were patches of empty seats in the corners of the upper deck on Friday. Still, it was an improvement.)

Even the team’s steady diet of unpopular off-the-field decisions — the “parting of ways” with longtime public address announcer Renel Brooks-Moon and the tone-deaf call to replace memorial bricks outside the stadium with a “digital kiosk” (the latter decision has since been reversed) — couldn’t dampen enthusiasm.

(Sadly, it could not excite my press box neighbor, who was clearly jetlagged from his trip from Korea and napped through the first three innings. Sleep easy, friend.)

This is Melvin’s ship now, and the tone in the dugout is noticeably different from former manager and wannabe self-help guru Gabe Kapler. Whereas Kapler was constantly “evolving” — his words — Melvin carries the confidence of success everywhere he goes. He’s personal and experienced, and most importantly, he knows who he is and what he’s about.

There’s a reason people (especially, it seems, sportswriters) gravitate towards him.

Melvin’s leadership has former Giants excited, too. Will Clark, Jake Peavy, and Dusty Baker hung around the dugout before the game, beaming smiles (even Clark). Sure, some had to be there, but Barry Bonds stood behind the batting cage, providing both intimidation and a few tips to the ’24 Giants. And we all know Bonds doesn’t show up anywhere he doesn’t want to be.

Take Bonds’ presence as tacit approval of the direction of the team.

And Bonds isn’t wrong. The contrast of last year’s 78-win team and this season’s squad is stark. Only one team in baseball spent more on free agents this past offseason (guess who?) and while that hasn’t translated into early-season wins, there is an indisputable rise in the level of play.

The Giants’ defense has markedly improved, I swear. The Giants might have booted it around on Friday, but the free agent additions of Gold Glove third baseman Chapman and shortstop Nick Ahmed give San Francisco the best left-side gloves in the division. The right side isn’t half-bad, either.

The team’s first big free-agent signing of the offseason, South Korean centerfielder Jung Hoo Lee, is off to a brilliant start in both the field, where he’s a massive upgrade over the rotating cast the Giants fielded last season, and he’s been solid at the plate, even if the numbers don’t say it. He scored a run on Friday — there are a whole lot more of those to come this season.

Oh, and then there’s big Jorge Soler, the team’s new designated hitter, who has already launched a 452-foot home run this season. If anyone can break the Giants’ 20-year streak of not fielding a 30-home-run hitter (the last was Bonds in 2004), it’s him.

The lineup is better.

The pitching is better, too.

Come Monday, the Giants will also boast the top two pitchers in last year’s National League Cy Young award voting — Logan Webb and Blake Snell, the winner — atop their rotation.

Converted reliever Jordan Hicks, who started Friday, already looks like a gem pickup this offseason. Once the pitcher with the fastest fastball in baseball, Hicks has tempered his heat and looks the part of someone who can be an asset for the Giants this season. He went seven innings and struck out five, allowing one earned run Friday — his only earned run of the season.

It’ll be a while yet until we see Lee, Chapman, Hicks, or Soler jerseys in the crowd — the legacy of Bonds, Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and… was that a Johnny Cueto jersey?… linger.

They might not be the Dodgers, but they look like the Giants again. After dabbling with Moneyball — which is just a clever rebranding of austerity — the Giants are acting like a big-money, big-market team.

And the big-market fans responded and paid big money for the opportunity to cheer on this new-look team for the first time this season.

Now it’s on the Giants to start winning games. Friday can’t be a season highlight.

Offseason buzz can only last so long. With the season officially and unofficially underway, it’s time to create even more in-season buzz, too.