Farhan Zaidi gone

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski on November 4, 2014 at 11:53 PM

Farhan Zaidi, who had been with the A's for the last 10 years (and who thus just postdates Moneyball), has been stolen away by the Dodgers with a flashy title (general manager), presumably more salary (as befits both said flashy title and the fact that they're the Dodgers), and a whole new type of challenge (spending gobs of money wisely and making the playoffs basically every year because if you spend $220 million on payroll you'd damn well better). Zaidi becomes, as far as I know, the first general manager in baseball history with a PhD (in economics, from Berkeley). He also becomes, of interest in a different way, the first Muslim general manager.

The former is intriguing if a bit concerning in terms of the continuing Wall Street-ization of baseball, though it raises fun trivia questions

while the latter is a legitimately positive step in American culture, and one that hopefully augurs other demographic breakthroughs (first openly gay, first female, etc. etc. etc.) in coming years.

Zaidi had been the A's Director of Baseball Operations for many years, and recently had the title "Assistant General Manager" added, presumably with a concomitant pay increase, and presumably as part of an effort to keep him from being stolen away by teams eager to lure him by offering a promotion from Ops to AGM. Susan Slusser reports:

It’s unclear if the A’s would move immediately to replace Zaidi, especially considering that longtime A’s assistant general manager David Forst, Beane’s heir apparent, remains in place.

It's also unclear whether the A's have anyone in-house who could move up a level. On their front office page, they have a Baseball Operations Analyst, Michael Schatz, but he is quite young, so it's anyone's guess whether he's someone who could be elevated to the Director role. (The obvious rejoinder: we're seeing sub-30 GMs these days, so who's to say what "young" even is anymore.)

It's a lot of guesswork, all of this, including the guesswork of how Zaidi will do in LA and how the A's will do without him. That he was successful in his job is clear from the fact that, without any particular obvious baseball connections (which is to say that he didn't play at a high level), he lasted 10 years in a front office, but GMing, even under Andrew Friedman, is another kettle of fish. Was he doing work that won't be easily replicated by the next man down the line such that the A's will lose some percentage of their ability to field a competitive team for bottom dollar? Who knows! Even the A's probably don't really know because assessment metrics for front-office jobs aren't exactly obvious.

So we'll twiddle our thumbs some more the rest of this winter and hope the A's do fine. And here's what I really hope: that if the A's win in 2015, nobody says "see Chip and Chili and Zaidi and Geaney, who cares, big deal" and if the A's lose in 2015, nobody says, "oh goddddd why'd they let Chip and Chili and Zaidi and Geaney go, cheap bastards cost us the playoffs!" There are too many variables.