Views from the Edge
L.A. Dodger fans have one more reason to hate the San Francisco Giants.
The Giants lured away the Dodgers’ general manager Farhan Zaidi, the man sports authorities credit for the recent success of the Boys in Blue.
The Giants have hired Major League executive Zaidi as the club’s president of baseball operations, President & CEO Larry Baer announced Thursday (Nov. 8).
“We set out to find one of the best minds in baseball and Farhan’s many accomplishments and expertise exceeded our expectations,” said Baer. “Farhan is widely viewed as one of the top executives in our industry and we are thrilled to have him lead the next chapter of Giants Baseball.”
“I am delighted to return to the Bay Area and to join one of the most storied franchises in the game,” said Zaidi, who worked with cross-bay rivals Oakland Athletics for 10 years before becoming the Dodgers general manager.
“I have watched the Giants from afar and I have great respect for the organization’s culture and many accomplishments. I am excited about this new opportunity and I’m looking forward to getting right to work.”
Zaidi spent the last four years as the, Dodgers’ General Manager after joining the club in November 2014. Under Zaidi’s leadership, the Dodgers have won four consecutive division titles while advancing to the National League Championship Series the last three years and the World Series the last two seasons. During that four-year span, the Dodgers have posted the second-best winning percentage in all of baseball (.584, 379-270).
Prior to joining the Dodgers, Zaidi spent 10 seasons with the Oakland Athletics, where he started as a baseball operations analyst in 2005 before being promoted to director of baseball operations in 2009, and assistant general manager/director of baseball operations in 2014.
With the Athletics, his primary responsibilities included evaluating and targeting players in the amateur draft, free agent and trade markets. The Athletics reached the playoffs during Zaidi’s final three seasons with the club. (2012-14)
Zaidi, 41, earned his bachelor of science degree in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and a Ph.D in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Lucy.
After his parents moved to Canada from their native Pakistan, Zaidi was born in Ontario. However he spent a good portion of his youth living in the Philippines after his father moved to Manila for his job with the Asian Development Bank.
After High School, he enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he graduated from with a Bachelor of Science degree; in addition to his Bachelor of Science, he also holds a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
While at Berkeley, he read Moneyball, the book about the Oakland A’s use of sabremetrics to determine the potential of ballplayers. He worked for the A’s from 2004 to 2014 in various capacities until he was hired by the Dodgers.
Despite his familiarity with sabremetrics, he is also loves talking and listening to the scouts, who often evaluate players by gut instinct.
Any baseball executive who depends on only one set of beliefs, Zaidi said during his first news conference at AT&T Park on Wednesday, is doomed to “leave a lot of opportunities on the table. I think where we are as an organization right now, we have to cast as wide of a net as possible and not put too many labels on what this process is going to be other than to make smart and sound decisions.”
The first MLB game Zaid attended was Aug. 10, 1987 game between the Giants and the Houston Astros, recalls Zaid. Candy Maldonado and Will Clark hit back-to-back home runs in the ninth inning against Houston to generate a 6-5 victory.
“To come full circle today was pretty special,” Zaidi said.
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