A new sheriff in town
Transformation begins with new boss, depends on his dance with Bochy
“Where we are, everything’s got to be on the table as far as how we move this team and roster forward.” Farhan Zaidi, on whether he would consider trading Madison Bumgarner
There is something I’ll call the New Baseball Dance.
In the old days, like 20 years ago, the manager managed, period. No interference from above. That’s been changing radically in recent years, with general managers under various titles, armed with stats, taking stronger roles in decisions like pitching rotations and lineups.
The Giants, in hiring Farhan Zaidi away from the Dodgers and making him the president of baseball operations, invited themselves to the dance.
Imagine this scene early next season, in manager Bruce Bochy’s office at AT&T Park. A few hours before the game, Zaidi saunters into Bochy’s office and sits down, smiling.
Zaidi: “Hey, Boch. I noticed you had the door
locked. That’s good, security is very important. I used my master key, so you wouldn’t have to get up to let me in.” Bochy: “Hmm.” Zaidi: “I just wanted to drop off today’s pregame analytics package.”
Bochy: “Hmph. Looks like the San Francisco phone directory.”
Zaidi: “What’s a phone directory? Anyway, the ‘points of emphasis’ are yellow-tabbed, like these six pages on Madison Bumgarner’s declining effectiveness after 63 pitches in day games. As usual, we’ll update this package after the third inning and deliver it to you in the dugout.” Bochy: “Can’t wait.” Zaidi’s hiring, announced formally at an introductory news conference Wednesday afternoon at AT&T Park, signals a big change in the Giants’ organization. A revolution, some would say.
The Giants have incorporated analytics in scouting, teambuilding and game strategy, but they haven’t cannonballed into that pool like some teams have. Now they’re bouncing up and down on the end of the diving board. Zaidi is an MIT grad who got his entry job in baseball with the A’s by presenting a thick binder full of computer projections for the 2005 A’s.
Now he comes to the Giants in a time of crisis, and team president Larry Baer says that at the job interview he was knocked out by Zaidi’s “transformational thinking.”
I asked Zaidi his thoughts on a prevailing narrative, however oversimplified, that he and Bochy would be new school vs. old school, a potential clash.
And if they did clash, who would have the final say in matters like, say, the rotation?
“I’m glad you qualified it as being oversimplified,” Zaidi said. “Look, it’s a convenient narrative to see this as kind of a clash of schools of thought. I don’t see it that way at all . ... I think I can learn a lot from (Bochy) and the way he sees the game, he has a lot more experience than I do. Again, I think there are things that I bring to the table that could give us an opportunity to collectively take a fresh look at how we do things . ... It’s not my goal to armchair-manage at all. I want someone who feels empowered to make those decisions. I just want to be able to talk through strategies and rosters and everything that comes with running a team on a day-to-day basis together.”
If Zaidi and Bochy disagree, who has final say?
“Anything that is under the purview of the manager, the manager has final say, period,” Zaidi said. “That is not even questioned . ... As far as managing the roster goes, I think that is under the purview of the front office; as far as the day-today management of the team — the lineups, pitching rotations, bullpens — that’s the manager’s job.”
It sounds like Zaidi, who studied for 10 years at the feet of A’s boss Billy Beane, will be Billy Lite. Involved, but not Mr. Bossypants.
Zaidi is more than a stat geek. He emphasizes his appreciation for scouts, their instinct and judgment. He noted Wednesday that in the 2009 amateur draft, A’s scouts filed glowing reports on a statistically unimpressive college kid, Max Muncy. The A’s drafted him, and when Muncy became a free agent after the 2017 season, Zaidi, recalling those scouting reports, snagged Muncy. He hit 35 homers and drove in 79 runs for the Dodgers this season.
Zaidi knows he has been criticized for his analytics.
“Certainly the narrative out there is that (the Dodgers’) last two World Series runs were thwarted by analytics,” Zaidi said. “I saw on Twitter today that Dave Dombrowski was talking about how the Red Sox were going to get deeper into analytics. Man, I wish they’d done that before the World Series, maybe it would have thwarted their World Series (hopes) to have a strong analytics department.”
Bochy was not at the news conference. He told The Chronicle’s Henry Schulman via text that he was not part of the interview process for Zaidi but was eager to collaborate.
“I’m all about being the best we can be,” Bochy said via text. “I welcome new thoughts and ideas. We have been using analytics.”
Here’s my guess: Bochy and Zaidi will get along.
Bochy is no bumpkin. He knows analytics is like the horseless carriage, here to stay, so he will be receptive. Bochy wants to keep managing the Giants, and to do that he’ll have to be open. No locking the office door.
Zaidi seems to have exceptional people skills. He might even be somewhere near Steve Kerr in that respect.
Bochy and Zaidi are two highly evolved dudes, baseball lovers from different planets.
Transformational thinking meets old-timey baseball smarts. It just might work.