Search for exec turns to L.A.
Dodgers’ Zaidi sits at the top of S.F.’s wish list
CARLSBAD, San Diego County — A Dodger might be taking over the Giants’ front office.
Five weeks after firing general manager Bobby Evans, the Giants are targeting Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi to become their next baseball boss, The Chronicle has confirmed.
It’s not clear if the Giants have made an offer or if Zaidi would accept.
Zaidi is a former A’s executive who has been with the Dodgers since November 2014. If he joins the Giants, he’d presumably be promoted from GM to run baseball operations, a role that has belonged for many years to Brian Sabean.
CEO Larry Baer had said he wanted someone with a mix of experience in both analytics and scouting, and Zaidi is considered mostly analytics driven, though an executive from another club told The Chronicle on Monday that if Zaidi is hired to run baseball operations, he could hire someone, perhaps in a GM capacity, with a heavier hand in scouting.
“You don’t have to represent both in singular,” the executive said. “You just need to be someone who’s open-minded to hire the right people around you and do the job you want them to do.”
All along, Baer has coveted a pecking order similar to that of the Dodgers, Cubs and Red Sox, who have Andrew Friedman, Theo Epstein and Dave
Dombrowski, overseeing the respective baseball operations departments and surrounding themselves with GM types.
At this week’s GM meetings at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, the Giants are being represented by vice president and assistant general manager Jeremy Shelley, who’s accompanied by vice president of baseball operations Yeshayah Goldfarb and director of baseball analytics Paul Bien.
Sabean is scouting the Arizona Fall League.
“You’re always doing your homework,” said Shelley, who has been with the Giants for 25 years, “whether it’s minorleague free agents, majorleague free agents or engaging in what other clubs are willing to do. It’s really normal business.”
Zaidi has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate from Cal in behavioral economics.
“He’s absolutely brilliant. He has a great qualitative mind, but also a creative mind,” Billy Beane, the A’s executive vice president of baseball operations, told The Chronicle in February 2014. “The ability to look at things both micro and macro is unique, and Farhan could do whatever he wants to do, not just in this game, but in any sport or any business. I’m more worried about losing him to Apple or Google than I am to another team.”
Later in the year, Zaidi joined the Dodgers. He has been with them for four of their six straight division titles and their two straight World Series appearances, losses to Houston last year and Boston this season.