The Dodgers are in talks with Farhan Zaidi about a possible front office position, report Fabian Ardaya and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. Zaidi spent the last six seasons running baseball operations with the Giants. San Francisco fired him and tabbed Buster Posey as their new front office leader at the end of the regular season.
Zaidi is no stranger to the L.A. organization. He spent four seasons as Dodgers general manager between 2015-18. Zaidi was Andrew Friedman’s top lieutenant during that run. He departed to take over baseball operations in San Francisco during the 2018-19 offseason. Before landing in L.A., he worked his way up to assistant general manager in the A’s organization under Billy Beane.
The 48-year-old’s tenure in San Francisco was mixed. The Giants only made the playoffs once in Zaidi’s six years. That was a magical 2021 season that saw San Francisco win 107 games, narrowly topping the Dodgers for the NL West title. The Giants have essentially been a league average team in the three years since then. Much of Zaidi’s tenure was defined by a series of near misses in their pursuits of top free agents (i.e. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa after his failed physical).
Zaidi’s front office had a knack for developing unheralded targets into productive role players or solid regulars. They hit on low-cost acquisitions of Mike Yastrzemski, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Thairo Estrada, for instance. Yet the Giants rarely had the high-end talent necessary to compete with star-studded rosters in Los Angeles and San Diego. That persisted even after San Francisco landed Blake Snell, Matt Chapman and Jorge Soler late last offseason.
Even if Zaidi’s tenure in San Francisco didn’t end the way he’d envisioned, it’s unsurprising that the Dodgers are interested in bringing him back. He’d bring more than a decade of high-level experience along with his personal connections to Friedman, GM Brandon Gomes, and senior vice president of baseball operations Josh Byrnes.
Finally a Dodgers move that’ll stop them dead in their tracks.
Getting him ia ot going to stop the dodgers of what they have been doing. Glad he screwed up rhe Giants lol
Spell
woah, stop drinking and typing
We always knew he was a double agent, probably never even left the Dodgers’ payroll.
Lmfao
He did something right winning 107 games. Correa contract was awful but maybe ownerships idea. Dodgers know him well and he may be one of those who is better when not the top decision maker.
There was no awful contract for Correa. It was – as you might have heard – withdrawn.
How can you withdraw something that never existed? The contract was real. And it wasn’t withdraw. It was contingent on medicals as all mlb contracts are. And even if he never had a ankle injury in his life it was still a awful contract.
Correa has been valuable 2 of 3 yrs in MIN when healthy. SF backed out due to medical concerns. So I’d say they deserve some credit here.
As for Zaidi, he still has contacts and relationships with individuals across the league. Adding him on top of what already in LA just seems a plus. Dodgers clearly are not going to be hurt financially from this. Nor will it count against CBT.
That dude couldn’t get one big name FA to come to the Giants so I doubt his contacts and relationships are worth anything to anyone. You can have him. He was trash.
I think it is a smart move on their part. Obviously LA has no problem getting the star power, what they need is the role/complimentary players to go with them. That is the one thing he excels at
I disagree, Z was absolutely awful in all fronts. Maybe the analytics part he might be an upgrade if a team is looking for that in the FO, but I wouldn’t touch that dude and give him any responsibility imo.
He was always a rat
If you mean he’s swimming towards one of the only floating boats, then ya I get it. Not too many teams are even trying right now.
Maybe not a rat, but a mole planted by the Dodgers; and Buster Possey sniffed him out and banished him.
Hahaha!
Saboteur!
Why not? I would.
He’s too rational to be a leading executive. He’s the perfect #2, though.
He is the male version of Kim Ng. Both are overrated.
Who thought Kim Ng was overrated?
People who only recognize competence in specific demographics that don’t include most people with names like “Kim Ng” or “Farhan Zahidi.”
It’s kind of amazing that teams don’t put non-compete clauses in the contracts of their execs. There really can be no trade secrets in MLB. Got your own in-house scouting and analytics formula? Not for long. Want to know why your rivals always crush your ace? Hire their assistant GM to find out what’s in their scouting reports.
Players obviously bring some of this stuff too, but non-compete clauses are more common for executive class jobs where proprietary methods and information are generated, not just applied.
@bcjd I always wondered this. Here’s what AI gave me. “Major League Baseball (MLB) is exempt from federal antitrust laws, which may be one reason why MLB executives don’t have non-compete contracts. The federal government doesn’t have antitrust jurisdiction over baseball because the court ruled that profiting from local skill and effort in the sport doesn’t constitute interstate commerce.”
This dude set the giants back five years whilst mishandling two top prospects and is gonna run back to LA then draft/develop an all star team like nothing ever happened.
Anything the Dodgers do right won’t be because of this goon! All they can do is defer lucrative overpaying contracts to get stars to sign on. Let’s just hope the league starts to cap on how much deferrals reduce the AAV
against the tax. Defer however much you want for personal income tax reasons but deferrals shouldn’t bring an AAV down more than 4-5m against the luxury tax
I’m pretty sure he had a huge hand in why their farm has been so lucrative in recent times. Also the Giants had deferrals and a signing bonus with Snell as well. I’m not saying I think it’s ok, I’m just saying every team does it when given the chance. That all being said it clearly weights toward big market teams in a way that may require some rethinking.
Danny DiVito!