And now for one thing fully totally different within the venerable historical past of a storied rivalry: Andrew Friedman matching wits towards Buster Posey.
Six years in the past, with nice fanfare, the San Francisco Giants recruited Friedman’s Dodgers lieutenant, Farhan Zaidi, to return the Giants to glory. After one season with a profitable report and no postseason sequence victories, the Giants on Monday fired Zaidi as their president of baseball operations.
His alternative: Posey, the franchise icon, the one Large to win a most beneficial participant award within the final 20 years, the catcher when the Giants received the World Collection in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
“We believe it is time for new leadership to elevate our team so we can consistently contend for championships,” Giants chairman Greg Johnson stated in a press release.
In 2022, the yr after he retired as a participant, Posey purchased an possession stake within the group and joined its board of administrators. Posey will encompass himself with skilled advisers — certainly one of whom, supervisor Bob Melvin, is maintaining his job at the same time as Zaidi misplaced his.
In a single crucial approach, Posey already was on the job. Underneath Zaidi, the Giants had struck out on big-dollar pitches to Bryce Harper, Aaron Choose, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. When the Giants’ possession group just lately pushed to retain third baseman Matt Chapman, the Athletic reported that the person who basically closed the $151-million deal was Posey, not Zaidi.
The lack to land a celebrity — and, in equity, Zaidi did land Carlos Correa earlier than the Giants known as off the deal due to considerations raised by a bodily examination — canceled out certainly one of Zaidi’s strengths.
Farhan Zaidi, a former govt with the Dodgers, has parted methods with the Giants.
(Eric Risberg / Related Press)
With the Dodgers, Friedman and Zaidi excelled at discovering expertise on the margins: signing Max Muncy as a minor league free agent, for example, and buying utilityman Chris Taylor in a minor league commerce. Even when these supporting gamers don’t turn into stars — and Muncy and Taylor did — they supply the depth that each profitable group requires.
With no Posey within the lineup, the Giants have been far too depending on the likes of first baseman-outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. and outfielder Mike Yastrzemski. And, as soon as the prized free brokers signed elsewhere, the Giants all too typically crammed out their rosters with extra free brokers higher fitted to depth roles than starring roles: the 2023 assortment included outfielders Michael Conforto and Mitch Haniger, and pitchers Sean Manaea, Taylor Rogers and Ross Stripling.
The draft didn’t present assist. In Zaidi’s six drafts, no participant has produced even a 3.0 profession WAR. Neither has any of the Giants’ first-round picks since 2011. The Giants’ first-round picks that preceded their run of three championships in 5 years included Posey (2008) and pitchers Madison Bumgarner (2007), Tim Lincecum (2006) and Matt Cain (2002).
Chapman ranked fifth in WAR amongst NL place gamers this season, in line with Fangraphs, and Logan Webb ranked fifth amongst NL pitchers. The Giants had no different participant within the high 30 for place gamers, or within the high 30 for pitchers.
Possibly Posey can persuade Blake Snell, who can choose out of his contract, to remain in San Francisco and provides the Giants two aces atop their rotation. However the NL West is loopy good now: The Dodgers received 98 video games, the San Diego Padres 93. The Arizona Diamondbacks, who stormed into the World Collection final yr with an 84-win group, received 89 video games this yr.
A little bit trivia: Posey turns into eligible for the Corridor of Fame in 2027. The one participant inducted into the Corridor who later grew to become a basic supervisor: Ted Simmons, who ran the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1992 and 1993. He resigned halfway by means of the 1993 season, after struggling a coronary heart assault.
In his first and solely full season in control of the Pirates’ baseball operations, Simmons led his group to a division championship. Simmons, in fact, had Barry Bonds on his roster. Posey wants to search out his Posey.
