Sometimes, things just don’t work out.
So, it didn’t work out. Most baseball exec jobs wind up with termination. People rarely go out on top. The Farhan Zaidi era was the first steps into the 21st century taken by the San Francisco Giants. Just because something didn’t work out as expected, though, doesn’t mean it was a total failure.
For one thing, these past six seasons should have dispelled the notion that “the industry” (as in Major League Baseball) was simply embracing a fad called “analytics,” that teams could ever go back to the way people remember the game from their childhood. That loud contingent of people were children last century. The generation born into Moneyball is old enough to buy a $30 beer at a game for their .500 team hoping to sneak in as a Wild Card.
The game has changed.
Which is why it’s time to look at Zaidi’s tenure not through the comparison of the new ways versus the old ways but by the way we judge everybody: performance. For the moment, Farhan Zaidi is not the John Schuerholtz of his era; but neither is he Cam Bonifay. He’s a smart guy who did the best he could when he got his shot and his best wound up not being good enough for the Giants. He never solved the question of how to get beyond his 75-win formula (I’m not linking to that talk again; I hope you know by now what I’m talking about.)
That disappointment happens all the time in all industries and walks of life — you know, managers, CEOs, boyfriends, girlfriends — and the team coming up short because of his decision-making isn’t a referendum on sabermetrics or any of the ways teams play the game. For another thing, his ways aren’t new. His pitch was innovating on the new standard. We thought we were getting the Hugh Jackman of his generation — Chris Hemsworth — but instead we got Sam Worthington (their connection: Australian-born movie stars).
At least, that’s what I thought the Giants were getting (the next Hugh Jackman). I was excited by the hire and thought he was just what the Giants needed — maybe a couple of years later than when they really needed him but welcome all the same.
Back in 2018 I had this to say when news broke that he was the Giants’ key target:
The team needs to evolve if it’s going to survive, but with so many big names with successful track records still within the organization and a marketing guru who’s very good at protecting the brand running the search committee, there was a very good chance the Giants were going to make cosmetic changes.
Instead, they’re going to embrace the “analytics” of modern baseball, perhaps to the chagrin of a sizable portion of their season ticket base and many of those big, successful names within the organization. But Farhan Zaidi is not a hatchet man and he’s not a sentient computer who’s going to feast on human heat to more efficiently process StatCast data.
After his press conference, I commented:
[…] Farhan Zaidi has been successful everywhere he’s worked and that’s because he combines book smarts and a creative mind with strong communication skills and obvious curiosity. After the press conference ended, Larry Baer audibly said “Good job” before awkwardly patting Zaidi on the back.
I’m not mentioning that to make fun of Baer, I’m doing it to highlight this point: Farhan Zaidi had a really impressive press conference. That could mean absolutely nothing in terms of on the field play, but after 20 years of a surly man who constantly sounded like he had a toothache but refused to go to the dentist, a smiling, laughing, joking, and younger person really felt like a breath of fresh air.
And the adoration didn’t stop there:
- “Farhan Zaidi is the perfect person for the job” (2019)
- “Farhan Zaidi is a sabermetric hero because he’s a brilliant innovator who has spurred both organizations he’s been with to a higher strata of success” (2019)
- May 1, 2019: Prediction: the Giants will be good again in 731 days – McCovey Chronicles
- Did not post in 2020 and 2021
- I thought the Ross Stripling signing was perfect and that the 2022 offseason, despite all that unpleasantness with Carlos Correa, was equally perfect.
- “It’s time to admit that bullpen games work” (2022)
- “The Giants are now back on the path of a winning organization.” (2023)
- “The Giants’ “pivotal” offseason has been a complete success — and revealing!” (2024)
I wasn’t totally alone in this, at least at the outset. Grant Brisbee of The Athletic wrote on this very site in 2018:
Zaidi is someone who has proven that he can navigate the angry seas of modern data. The Giants did not have someone who could do that, and it showed.
[…]
But the important thing is that Farhan Zaidi is a proven evaluator who is coming from a team that might have been the best at analyzing a torrent of information and using its vast resources to acquire and create the best players. He should make the Giants better, if only because, buddy, they probably couldn’t get a lot worse.
And this Toronto Star interview from 2014, before he became The Next Big Name In GMing, reported on a guy with an easy-to-root-for perspective:
He said the one constant over his decade working in the game is its ability to humble. From the draft room to in-game strategy, as soon as you think you know what you’re doing, the game will consistently surprise you.
“As predictable as we try to make it, as much as we try to understand it, between all the variables involved, between all the personalities involved, you can only know so much,” he said. “All of these things you can only know to a certain degree, so you can’t get overly dogmatic about everything or think there’s a right answer, because baseball winds up being a game with a lot of grey area. You try to be as good as you can at evaluating players and choosing the right guys and making the right moves when it comes to player transactions or in-game strategy, but the reality is every time you think you have something figured out the game will humble you. That’s an enduring lesson.”
The new reports revealing Smartest Guy In The Room Syndrome, culture clashes, and alienating roster decisions are to be expected. For some, this will feel like confirmation of the bias they’ve had against him from the jump. For others, it will feel like smears against a guy who put together a 107-win team and perhaps serves as an avatar for aspiring front office folks or a subset of data-driven fans.
Like he said in 2014, maybe it’s problematic to praise him so much. Ten years on, I think the criticisms can be equally problematic. He’s not a figurehead and analytics-driven front offices aren’t going anywhere. Although, given my track record with predictions, maybe Buster Posey’s “introductory” press conference might prove me wrong.
But look, Farhan Zaidi was far from perfect, no matter what my headlines over time or what commenters here and elsewhere insisted, but neither was he an abject failure. The 5 losing seasons in 6 years, though, doesn’t mean he fell somewhere in the middle. Maybe just short of the middle, like 49.4%, the team’s winning percentage over the past 3 seasons. Top baseball execs, like managers, are hired to be fired. In that way, a previously unconventional choice has wound up becoming a typical person in his field. That’s the clearest demonstration of how the game has changed: he’s a league average exec.
He gave the Giants the boost they needed to evolve beyond the post-Bonds and post-Championship eras so that they could fit their new context: the Statcast era. Farhan Zaidi came to the Giants when they were really bad and moved them to being better than bad. It wasn’t enough but it wasn’t nothing, and that summation should make it obvious why a change needed to happen.