The Dodgers are in talks with Farhan Zaidi about a possible front office position, report Fabian Ardaya and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. Zaidi spent the last six seasons running baseball operations with the Giants. San Francisco fired him and tabbed Buster Posey as their new front office leader at the end of the regular season.
Zaidi is no stranger to the L.A. organization. He spent four seasons as Dodgers general manager between 2015-18. Zaidi was Andrew Friedman’s top lieutenant during that run. He departed to take over baseball operations in San Francisco during the 2018-19 offseason. Before landing in L.A., he worked his way up to assistant general manager in the A’s organization under Billy Beane.
The 48-year-old’s tenure in San Francisco was mixed. The Giants only made the playoffs once in Zaidi’s six years. That was a magical 2021 season that saw San Francisco win 107 games, narrowly topping the Dodgers for the NL West title. The Giants have essentially been a league average team in the three years since then. Much of Zaidi’s tenure was defined by a series of near misses in their pursuits of top free agents (i.e. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa after his failed physical).
Zaidi’s front office had a knack for developing unheralded targets into productive role players or solid regulars. They hit on low-cost acquisitions of Mike Yastrzemski, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Thairo Estrada, for instance. Yet the Giants rarely had the high-end talent necessary to compete with star-studded rosters in Los Angeles and San Diego. That persisted even after San Francisco landed Blake Snell, Matt Chapman and Jorge Soler late last offseason.
Even if Zaidi’s tenure in San Francisco didn’t end the way he’d envisioned, it’s unsurprising that the Dodgers are interested in bringing him back. He’d bring more than a decade of high-level experience along with his personal connections to Friedman, GM Brandon Gomes, and senior vice president of baseball operations Josh Byrnes.
