Giants Mailbagg, part 1: What went into the transition from Zaidi to Posey

The Giants were a terrible baseball team in 2008. But they had one heck of a history-making 48 hours in mid-August.

They had lost the first three games in Houston and then they took the field on getaway day with a fully embraced youth movement that included two first-time call-ups by the names of Pablo Sandoval and Travis Ishikawa. Their pregame clubhouse abounded with positive energy.

They lost anyway.

The following day, the Giants played a series opener against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. Matt Cain pitched seven strong innings, Bengie Molina had four hits and so did Randy Winn, who might have gotten the triple he needed for the cycle if his drive in the ninth-inning hadn’t bounced over the fence for an automatic double. The Giants won 5-1 to snap their four-game losing streak.

But the biggest victory, the franchise-altering victory, came after the game. It was Aug. 15 and the Giants faced a midnight deadline to sign their first-round draft pick or lose their rights to him. They’d taken Florida State catcher Buster Posey with the fifth pick. The Giants knew that Posey had the leverage to demand the largest up-front bonus in draft history. He wouldn’t have fallen to them otherwise. They also wouldn’t have taken him if they weren’t willing to meet those demands. There was never a question that he would sign.

But both sides sweated out the process anyway. Till the last possible moment. And this was all terribly inconvenient for your friendly neighborhood beat reporter, who’d gotten up at 5 a.m. that morning to catch a flight and who wanted nothing more than to test the integrity of the blackout curtains in his hotel room but had to stay in the press box well past the final out anyway.

At the stroke of midnight, we got the news: Posey had signed for a record $6.2 million. It was the moment when Buster officially became a Giant. And all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

Now here we are more than 16 years and three World Series championships later. Buster Posey isn’t just a future Hall of Famer and a franchise icon. He’s the boss of the entire baseball operation.

You’re never sure what a first-round draft pick’s future will be in the game. We had a pretty good idea that Posey would be an impact player in short order. But I’m trying to imagine telling my 2008 self that the kid the Giants just signed will be their president of baseball operations in just 16 years. It’s truly astonishing stuff.

Will Posey be successful? Who the heck knows? It’s like he’s a first-rounder all over again. He’s full of promise with everything to prove. Except this time, he’ll get his start with an endless supply of trust and goodwill. There are a million questions that will require answering over the coming weeks and months. You’ve been kind enough to provide some of them — so many, we are breaking this Mailbagg into two parts. Let’s dig in to part one:

Do you think (or know) that ownership’s frustration with the movement on Matt Chapman’s deal was an isolated instance, or perhaps an observed behavior over a longer period? — Andrew R.

From what I understand, it would be incorrect to assume that Posey’s intervention was the final straw for ownership with Farhan Zaidi. I don’t think they blamed Zaidi for the delay or felt he was being obstructionist or ineffective. They just wanted to get the deal done. They knew the player wanted to get the deal done. And they cut through the noise to make that happen.

The importance of our story wasn’t in the mechanics of the negotiation. The importance was demonstrating Posey’s appetite and agency. And now that Posey sits in the big chair, we can understand just how motivated he’s been to take on a leadership role.

As someone who is sympathetic to Zaidi but acknowledges that the last three years have been disappointing, I’m interested in trying to understand better why the Giants haven’t been more successful since 2021. I would be really interested in hearing perspectives from people both inside and outside the organization. There has been a lot of reporting on why fans were displeased with Zaidi’s approach, but that’s a different question than why the team didn’t win more games, since many of the tactics Giants fans most disdained (platoons, openers, not bunting or focusing on making “productive outs”, catchers going down on one knee, etc.) have been adopted by successful teams (most notably the Dodgers, but also the Astros, Orioles, Rays, Brewers, even the Royals (!) this year under Matt Quatraro, etc.).

Zaidi was willing to go against traditionalist wisdom and risk the ire of fans because he thought doing this would help the team to be more successful, and obviously if the Giants had won 90+ games the past few years, he would still have a job, even if there was still grumbling from some fans. So what specifically about Zaidi’s approach failed in 2022-24? Was it just bad luck, or were there some kind of systematic failures in the front office’s decision-making? — Gerald K.

Appreciate the thoughtfulness of this question. I always felt the Zaidi critics did themselves a disservice when they would reduce their arguments to “platoons bad! openers bad!” Or worse, some would resort to superficial (sometimes borderline racist) insults. As you’ve articulated so well in your question, many of the issues that some fans had with Zaidi concerned changes in the game that have become adopted broadly and by some of the league’s most successful teams. Truly then, their frustrations weren’t with Zaidi but with trends in the game that don’t match their preferred aesthetics. (Honestly, I think the Giants might have won a few more games in the second half this season if they had used openers and deployed the pitching in a less traditional sense.)

If there were systematic failures in the Zaidi tenure, especially the latter stages, it was a lack of organizational leadership. Morale flagged. There wasn’t enough communication with department heads. Some employees had no idea what a few of their coworkers in baseball operations actually did. Team chairman Greg Johnson summarized it last week: “The gap in the organization was that tone at the top just flowing down. What is the philosophy? What are we trying to do? That was the main need: to get somebody in there who understands the Giants way.”

I wouldn’t blame Zaidi if he got tired of politicking for his methods. It’s pretty clear that he did not enjoy nearly the same authority in these past two seasons that he did in 2019-22. He replaced Gabe Kapler with a more conventional manager who brought with him a very conventional coaching staff. He turned down the volume on waiver claims and arbitrage-style transactions. Whether this was intentional or not, there wasn’t the same energy or sense of a stated mission statement. I can’t imagine the job was much fun for him towards the end.

Some of this is par for the course when franchise spends a lot of money and doesn’t win. People aren’t in a great mood and they stop talking to each other. But I think there was a little more going on than just that.

I’ll add that Zaidi will be unemployed for exactly as long as he wants to be. The industry will continue to value greatly his intellect and his skills. He should have his pick of opportunities outside baseball, too, if that’s what he wants to do. Replacing him probably had to happen. But replacing what went out the door with him won’t be an easy task.

I realize it’s rather difficult to lose one’s employment — especially with the pride and prestige of being the president of baseball operations with the Giants — but with so much patience invested by fans and commitments made to Farhan during his six year reign by the Giants organization, did Farhan make any statements to the press or fans upon his release? Did he thank the Giants organization or fans in any way for their time and investment in Farhan’s leadership? — Kylzsbndr N.

Not to my knowledge. He didn’t respond to a text and he doesn’t post on social media. He did travel to Arizona on the last road trip to meet with folks at Papago and he volunteered himself for a session with the five beat reporters who were on the trip. He wanted to address the Marco Luciano confusion and the Thairo Estrada decision, especially.

He didn’t want to address his status, so it would’ve been a bit awkward to dole out thank yous in that context. I’d imagine he will express some of those thoughts at some point in the future. There was this, though: When I asked him about adapting to the baseball culture in San Francisco, he was sure to mention that the process here required more time than a typical rebuild because he had a mandate to put a competitive team on the field every year.

There seem to be a lot of negative Zaidi stories coming out in the wake of his firing. Covering a single team over time no doubt presents challenges. How do you balance doing accurate, honest reporting with maintaining the access to players and management that enables you to do your job? Are there Zaidi issues/stories you had to soften or avoid? — R M.

By being fair and accurate. By reporting on issues or incidents that have actual news value and that I can confidently verify through multiple trusted sources. By not regurgitating everything I hear or every stray rumor. By being upfront with both players and management, and if I ever find myself taking a side or a position of advocacy, it’s being on the side of fans and readers. By repeating, “It’s a hard game” to myself three times before every time I enter a major-league clubhouse. By hearing people out when they disagree with something I write about them. Most of all, by being accountable to our readers.

The fans are very happy with the Posey move, but in watching the Giants struggles this year in almost all phases of the game, Bob Melvin and his staff were a major disappointment. How did his other tenures go in Year two-three? What does he need to do to get the on-field play squared away? He talked a lot about accountability when he took over, but they sure didn’t play like it. I’m not sure he’s the guy based on what I saw this year, as much as I love his approach with fans and media and dugout demeanor. — Blair R.

We shouldn’t underestimate how hard it is to be a first-year manager in a new organization. That’s true for rookie managers as well as for someone like Melvin who’s done the job for more than two decades. I agree, after watching Kapler and his staff work so actively to find marginal edges, it was shocking at times to see the sloppy play last season. A lot of that was a function of young players being rushed to the big leagues while also playing out of position. But other issues starting with the inattention to the running game were inexcusable and cannot happen again.

I know there’s been a lot of chatter recently about Melvin not having the authority to write the lineup. This is the most accurate way to characterize it: Melvin knew that he couldn’t pick every battle, and because it was his first year in the organization, he probably conceded more to the analysts than he otherwise might have. So I’d expect a little more assertiveness in Year 2. Posey certainly expressed confidence in continuing with Melvin on the bench.

Is it safe to assume Posey gives Melvin one year before he turns things over to his buddy from Florida State, who’s currently coaching first? — Aaron S.

If you’re making prop bets on Melvin’s eventual replacement, whenever that day comes, you could do a lot worse than Mark Hallberg.

Who do you believe would be the top three candidates for the Giants general manager position? — Danny T.

Posey was pretty consistent in his messaging around this: He wants a GM with a scouting background. He wants someone who can evaluate talent. If you ask me, he’d be best served to hire a GM who has experience interfacing with agents and experience sizing up rival executives in trade discussions. He needs someone confident and indefatigable who can be gregarious and take charge of a meeting. And he needs someone who can be aligned with Posey’s baseball sensibilities. There isn’t a more experienced candidate who matches that description than Kim Ng. Whether she’d be interested in a GM role as a clear subordinate to Posey, after having the top job in Miami a couple years ago, is another matter.


Would former Marlins’ GM Kim Ng be interested in the Giants position? (Al Diaz / Miami Herald / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

We know that longtime A’s assistant GM Billy Owens will be on the interview list. I’ve heard a few other names that might be part of the mix, including a surprise or two, but need a bit more corroboration before I can report them. And if the Yankees let Brian Sabean out of the final year of his contract, then Posey made it pretty clear that he’d love to have Sabean back as a senior advisor whose voice might carry actual weight within the organization again.

It’s weird to see Pete Putila reassigned. Do you think he will simply look for a job in another organization rather than take a demotion? — Juan R.

Give the Giants credit. They didn’t do the evil thing some companies do when there’s a regime change. They didn’t tell Putila to re-interview for his own job. By giving him notice right away that he won’t be the GM, Putila should have ample time to look for a role that might be a better fit in another organization. Put it this way: I can’t imagine that the Giants will deny any permissions to interview him sought by other clubs.

Will Posey be out front in terms of trades/personnel decisions or will that be his GM? — Terry C.

Great question. I’d expect that Posey will be actively involved in all the big decisions and he’ll largely cede the day-to-day business of putting out roster fires to the GM. There’s little doubt that Posey has the acumen and the trust of ownership to provide broad leadership. What will be his roster-building priorities this winter? What kind of trade negotiator will he be? Where does he anticipate being the most active? We’re light on specifics because I’m not sure that they have any to offer just yet.

(Top photo of Posey: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)



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