SAN FRANCISCO — Not long after the Giants hired Farhan Zaidi to become their top baseball official prior to the 2019 season, the analytically inclined former lieutenant with the A’s and Dodgers met with season-ticket holders for a chalk talk in the home clubhouse. He discussed unconventional strategies including the use of a relief pitcher to open games. He expected pushback.
He also expected to win them over. “What if I told you that using an opener would without question improve our chances to win that night’s game?” Zaidi, who holds a degree from MIT and an economics Ph.D from Berkeley, told the assembly.
“Would you still be against it?” Advertisement Almost every hand in the room shot up. And in that moment, as Zaidi would later explain, he understood what he was up against. Zaidi tried but struggled to adapt to the traditional baseball expectations that permeate the Giants’ ecosystem.
The franchise’s top decision-makers and diehards demonstrated only so much flexibility in return. They were willing to buy into Zaidi and some of his less conventional strategies in 2021, when the team won 107 regular-season games and finished atop the National League West. But the winning seasons did not continue.
The playoff appearances did not continue. And regardless of fault or cultural fit, the record and the results will always weigh heaviest. They will always sink down to the bottom line.
The Giants signaled a major regime change on Monday, firing Zaidi after they .
