Zaidi clarifies Giants lineup controversy with Melvin after shooting originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Farhan Zaidi understands the criticism of his six-year tenure as the Giants’ president of baseball operations.
He was fired after yet another disappointing 2024 MLB season, and he spoke publicly to Shayna Rubin of The San Francisco Chronicle for the first time since his departure.
“The autopsy is never pretty, and for me it’s not productive to respond to all the stories out there,” Zaidi said in a phone call with Rubin. “I will say that during my time with the organization, I have given my full dedication to the job, without any ulterior motives or agendas. I have always tried to treat people with respect and be a good ambassador for the Giants community.
“Plus, people are passionate about the Giants and professional sports, and there will always be a discourse about those things. And that’s the nature of the beast.”
A major topic that emerged after Zaidi’s departure was San Francisco’s lineups, which became increasingly controversial after Giants icon Will Clark, who serves as a special assistant with the team, spoke about it on a recent podcast.
Clark claimed that Zaidi shaped the team’s line-up and was “in control of everything”.
“[Manager] Bob Melvin would want this guy in the lineup, that guy in the lineup and Farhan would outdo him,” Clark said on the podcast. “You set yourself up because that’s Melvin’s job.”
But Zaidi made it clear to Rubin how the lineups were determined.
“I recognize there are a lot of frustrations about what has been a disappointing season,” Zaidi told Rubin. “I mean, for me in my 20 years in baseball, last year was probably the most disappointing season given the expectations we had going into the year with the offseason we had and how it played out.
“But one thing that has always been important to me in my time in baseball, and certainly in my six years with the Giants, is strong collaboration between different parts of the organization, whether it’s player development and the front office or the clubhouse and the coaching staff and the manager and the front office, I certainly believe that was the case last year.”
Melvin also spoke with Rubin and acknowledged that Zaidi was “passionate” about the lineup, but the collaborative dynamic was unlike anything he had experienced before in his baseball career.
Zaidi and Melvin, whose relationship long predated their Giants union, stated that they both had a say in the lineup creation process — something that was important to both of them.
“I have a long-term relationship with Bob. I think we understand each other very well,” Zaidi told Rubin. “Because of the circumstances in which and how he was hired, it was very important that our relationship worked well. So I saw his feedback very regularly throughout the season about whether the front office dynamic was working for him and the coaching staff.
“Based on the feedback I got from him, I’m confident it worked well. We certainly talked about formation and game strategy the way the most effective front office and manager partnerships do. There was always an exchange of ideas that as one of us Because of our history I felt strongly about one or the other, there was a lot of respect for that. But ultimately as a manager I felt it was his role to have the final say on the line-up.’
With one year left on his contract, the Giants parted ways with Zaidi and hired franchise big Buster Posey as his replacement.
Melvin also expects to work with Posey and new general manager Zack Minasian on the lineup in 2025. Posey even said that he and Melvin have already talked about it and agreed to a mutual dialogue on the lineup, but Melvin will have the final say.
“Bob has been doing this for 30 years,” Posey told KNBR during an interview last week. “Bob and I have already talked about this. He wants to have a dialogue around it. But he ended up being in the dugout and… [is] getting to know his players better than I do, because I’m not around them all the time.
“We’re going to use analytics. I talked to BoMel about this: ‘What do we want the flow of this to be? Let’s let the projections spit out what it should be, look at it, and then you write the lineup. Or you write the line- up and then look at the projections?’ Ultimately, I leave it up to him. I want my manager to use his years of experience to write the line-up.”
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