Baseball boss Zaidi ‘had a front-row seat’ to Giants from years with L.A., A’s
Farhan Zaidi had his first interview with the Giants on Friday, a planned two-hour “get to know you” that lasted six. They met again Sunday and Monday, when Giants president Larry Baer offered Zaidi a chance to chart the club’s future for the next five years.
On Tuesday, Zaidi accepted after the Dodgers and Major League Baseball imposed a deadline so this would not drag beyond the general manager meetings. On Wednesday, the Giants introduced their new president of baseball operations at an AT&T Park news conference.
If only the Giants’ hoped-for rise from two straight losing seasons to another World Series could move that fast. It won’t. But Zaidi made it clear he wants to see late October baseball in San Francisco again as quickly as possible.
“I’ve kind of had a front-row seat for the Giants over the last 14 years,” Zaidi said, “be-
tween being in the division the last four years and being across the bay the previous 10, seeing the three Giants parades on the local news and hearing my friends complain about how it’s messing up their commutes.
“That’s the goal. I hope we are messing up people’s commutes with parades very soon.”
How long that takes is obviously unknown. So is the route that Zaidi will choose, at least until he gets to know his new players and farm system better. As expected, the 41-yearold MIT graduate and UC Berkeley doctorate holder was light on specifics.
Anyone who thought Madison Bumgarner would get a quick hint on his 2019 ZIP code was too optimistic. But a few themes became clearer with Zaidi’s hire, starting with his contract, which runs five years.
Mainly, that was the cost of prying Zaidi away from the Dodgers, whom he helped lead to four National League West titles and two pennants. But it also reflects the time it takes to walk into a situation like that of the Giants, create a longterm blueprint, execute it and, if all goes well, turn Market Street into a sea of cheering humanity again.
Which is not to say the Giants are looking at a five-year rebuild, or even three years.
Baer said none of the halfdozen candidates who got initial interviews argued the Giants need to blow everything up and start over. While Baer acknowledged that candidates understood the organization’s philosophy of trying to win every year, he said Zaidi “isn’t a fan of tearing things down for X number of years and building it back up.”
Moreover, Zaidi said nobody — fans, players, executives — likes to play out the string at the end of a losing year, and he hopes the Giants play “meaningful baseball as deep into the season as soon as we can.” In 2019? Probably not. Baer said, even “if the changes are in one year, that’s great. But you’ve got to deal with the art of the possible.”
Zaidi has no timetable, nor did Baer provide one. Baer learned from all the interviews that the Giants’ main focus needs to be identifying and acquiring talent through the draft, trades and free agency without regard to immediate performance in the majors.
The example Zaidi offered was the A’s trading for Khris Davis after a 94-loss season.
“It wasn’t a typical move for a quote-unquote rebuilding team, but I think their mantra was let’s go out and identify value where they see it and just make this team better one move at a time,” Zaidi said. “They obviously reaped a significant payoff for it this season.”
Lest anyone think Zaidi believes he needs to jettison all of the older, expensive players he has, he said the club needs to take this year’s injuries under consideration, and he will not “throw the baby out with the bath water” if keeping them makes sense.
Naturally, Bumgarner’s future was one of the first questions posed to Zaidi, who had big lefties on his mind. He was negotiating Clayton Kershaw’s contract extension as he began his process with the Giants.
The short answer on Bumgarner: It’s too soon to tell. The long answer …
“He’s been a seminal pillar of this franchise for a long time,” Zaidi said. “That carries a lot of weight. At the same time, this is kind of Day 1 for me. I’m eager to get opinions from a wide range of people on what they think makes sense in terms of a broader direction.
“Where we are, everything’s got to be on the table as far as how we move this team and roster forward.”
On other points:
Zaidi hopes to move fast on hiring a general manager. He has to, because teams are reluctant to grant permission this far into the offseason, which is why Zaidi had one day to decide whether to move from L.A. to San Francisco. The new GM could be one of the assistant GMs whom Baer interviewed for Zaidi’s job.
Zaidi suggested that bolstering the rotation might be a priority, as is getting more athletic position players, but he sees bullpen depth as a strength. He looks forward to learning the timetables for some of the live arms the Giants have in the minors.
Asked whether other GMs had already called and texted with trade proposals, Zaidi said, “I think everybody’s following the decorum of making the congratulatory phone calls and texts first, and then trying to steal good players from each other.”