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USATSI

The Oakland Athletics have exercised a club option in manager Bob Melvin's contract for the 2022 season, the team announced on Tuesday.

Melvin, who will turn 60 in October, has been at the helm for the Athletics since midway through the 2011 season, when he replaced Bob Geren on an interim basis. In the decade since, the Athletics have posted a winning record in six of their nine full seasons. The A's have made the playoffs in each of those six seasons (though they were one-and-done on three occasions). 

Predictably, Melvin ranks highly on most of the franchise's managerial leaderboards. He bypassed Tony La Russa for the second most games managed in A's history earlier this season, and he ranks third in games above .500 and sixth in overall winning percentage. (Connie Mack, who also owned the A's, managed an impossible 7,466 contests during his day.)

Melvin is, at this point, the longest tenured manager in MLB. Cleveland's Terry Francona is the second-longest tenured, having been hired in October of 2012. No other skipper was hired before the 2014 season, and only one manager beyond Melvin and Francona, Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays,  was hired before the 2015 season. (Craig Counsell, the Milwaukee Brewers skipper, took over in May of 2015.)

Prior to joining the Oakland organization, Melvin served as manager with the Seattle Mariners for two seasons and with the Arizona Diamondbacks for parts of five. His overall career record is 1,301-1,223, or a 51.5 winning percentage.

The A's entered Tuesday in first place in the American League West with a 41-27 record, good for a 2 ½ game lead over the Houston Astros. Oakland's success comes despite a plus-24 run differential that ranks just sixth in the league and is less than a third of the Astros'.