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.
Other than putting together a 107 win team
That was the asterisk to his tenure for sure. But more about Posey and Crawford over performing then Z having anything to do with it! Lol
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!
An agent provocateur, at a minimum.
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.”
That’s because front office job candidates don’t want them. MLB is a monopoly so real world norms don’t apply.
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.
The Giants didn’t defer much of anything to a point where it didn’t count towards the tax. It was a bonus, and not used to hand overpaying lucrative contracts to multiple heavy stars in such a short time. Most teams use it to sign a big star. Not a crap load of em.
balk, the Giants offered Ohtani the same contract the Dodgers signed him to. He just chose not to sign with the Giants. You are delusional if you don’t think the Giants aren’t offering deferrals. They just couldn’t sign anyone because no one wants to go there.
That’s an old tired statement bro. The Giants did offer Ohtani the same contract, but that was one player. They tried to meet a single player at his demands. Far more reasons on why Ohtani didn’t sign with the Giants than it being just because he didn’t want to play there. He already lived in LA and that was his major factor. My problem isn’t with the deferrals, it’s with the abuse and use of over 1 billion to stack the deck. 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. If you can’t look at that and understand why people are exhausted with the method the Dodgers are using then it’s pointless to talk with you about it at all.
They offered Judge $50M more than the Yankees. Again, they have the money to give players and were willing to structure contracts similar to the Dodgers. The Giants problem is nobody wants to go there. It’s not a tired narrative, it’s just that simple.
I ultimately agree that there should be some kind of cap on deferred money %, but there isn’t right now and I don’t know why more teams are exploiting this loophole.
No they did not offer more money than the yanks for Judge, they offered the exact same, only the friars did that. The Giants offered the same amount. Chapman obviously wanted to play in San Francisco, so yes it’s a tired narrative.
The Giants offered $360 million before the Yanks did, but it was always going to be the Yankees winning that bid. Same for Ohtani. Nothing to do with the Giants. In fact the players said the exact opposite as you.
So star players and agents are going to other teams to get them to match the Giants highest bid because they don;’t want to take the Giants money lol. Once again, star players don’t want to come here for whatever reason. Like it or not, this narrative won’t change til they sign a free agent star player to a big contract.
Chapman and Snell came here last year because there were no other options. Snell smartly choose the Giants so he could rebuild his value and no one was giving Chapman that contract he ended up extending for. And Chapman isn’t a star to begin with anyways.
No bro…the Giants have been able to sign stars, Bonds, Kent to name two. No one was going to give Snell the contract the Dodgers offered. He pitched better for the Friars than he did for the Giants, so your explanation is off. Why all of the sudden did the Dodgers think he was worth 180 million after a not so great season with the Giants? He was hurt half of it. He’s only been healthy for two seasons his whole career. Chapman is a platinum gold glove and is definitely worth the money he received. So you’re tripping there.
balk, the examples you listed are over 25 years old and 3 front offices ago. Jeff Kent wasn’t even a star when the Giants acquired him. Bonds signed him when Bill Clinton was the President lol. He also signed with the Giants mainly because his dad was a star here.
Saying Snell was not great last year for the Giants is simply false. After he got healthy, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. I read somewhere he has a 2.6 ERA since June of the 2023 season.
Chapman is a good player, but not a star. Let’s just say no one is buying tickets to see him play like they would for Soto or Judge.
But that’s not what you said Fred. Haha! You said star players don’t want to come to the bay, but they have, and it wasn’t because of his dad it was because of his godfather Mays as one of the reasons. Altogether though I agree it’s tough to get a slugger to the bay, but I think it’s for different reasons. Dodgers park isn’t a band box so it’s not because of the park I’m sure we could agree. Both teams have had their ups and downs, most recently the Giants because of the bad contracts that had to come off the books, along with terrible development, which brings me to the point of why I have a problem with the deferrals.
Danny DiVito!
Agent Farhan did a fine job in his Giants tenure. A hero’s welcome awaits upon his return….