MLB Rumors: Giants 'Seemed to Lack Identity, Allure, Soul' Under Zaidi Before Posey

When the San Francisco Giants made the surprise decision to hire Buster Posey as their president of baseball operations last September, it was with the goal of bringing the once-proud franchise back to prominence in MLB.

Per ESPN's Alden Gonzalez, there was a feeling among people who know the organization intimately that the Giants "seemed to lack identity, allure, soul" under previous president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.

Giants chairman Greg Johnson went so far as to tell Gonzalez he believed there was "tension between the old-school model and the new-school analytics" that Zaidi incorporated.

"There was some noise coming from the clubhouse that maybe we didn't have the right balance," Johnson said.

Gonzalez noted Posey's hiring is an attempt to bring back an identity, allure and soul that some feel has been missing by deviating from the "analytical roster-building approach that has overtaken the industry, prioritizing hyper-efficiency and placing less emphasis on aptitude and experience."

The approach from Posey did resonate with at least two members of the organization. Justin Verlander, who joined the team on a one-year, $15 million contract in January, explained to Gonzalez his talks with Posey gave him confidence about the Giants' future:

"I think it could very much be something that can lead to having a better organization. It's like me pitching and probably him hitting and catching towards the end of his career—you were brought up in an age before analytics, and so you have this wealth of instinct. And this is why it's hard to put words on it because you have all these instincts that you gained over time from playing the game, and then all of a sudden you're inundated with numbers.

"I think the best players were able to go, 'OK, I see this, I see this,' and put them all together, and you get something magical, really. And if he's able to do that as a president, as a person bringing in players, there's potential for something that's just magical."

Zaidi did push back against Johnson's assessement, telling Gonzalez he never got the impression anyone on the team had any issues.

"Through that channel, I got positive feedback," Zaidi said. "When you postmortem things, maybe you have a different lens on it, but it was something that I was very conscious of, throughout my time with the Giants and particularly last year."

One of the issues the Giants had throughout Zaidi's tenure was getting free agents to sign. They were frequently connected to top stars when they became available, but routinely finished no higher than second.

San Francisco's list of free-agent misses includes Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. The Giants did have an agreement with Carlos Correa in December 2022, but the deal fell apart due to concerns over his physical.

There has been a lot of speculation over the years about why the Giants have struggled to sign top-tier free agents. Johnson said in May 2024 on Tim Kawakami's podcast (h/t Andy Lundquist of NBC Sports Bay Area) that position players may not want to play home games in Oracle Park because it's historically been more favorable to pitchers.

"I don’t think it’s any negative on Farhan or any negative on the team’s approach, we were aggressive in going after them. We didn’t get them, but remember our park is not viewed as one of the easy parks to hit home runs in so to go get a Bryce Harper or Ohtani or Judge for that matter, I think we’re the fifth-hardest park to hit home runs in Major League Baseball so that makes it a little more difficult to go out there and get the home run hitter."

Posey, who had no prior front-office experience prior to being hired by the Giants, has already shown a willingness to be aggressive in free agency.

The Giants signed Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million contract in December. It's the richest deal in franchise history, ironically surpassing Posey's nine-year, $167 million extension signed in March 2013.

The Giants hired Zaidi in November 2018 after he spent five seasons as general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Their hope was he would be able to bring the model of scouting and analytics that has made their NL West rivals the standard by which all other clubs are measured.

Things didn't go as planned for the Giants, even beyond the list of players they were unable to sign. They finished .500 or worse in four of five seasons under Zaidi.

There was one year when everything clicked into place for the Giants during that era. They won a franchise-record 107 games in 2021, but lost to the Dodgers in the NLDS.

San Francisco hasn't won a playoff series since winning the 2014 World Series. It did beat the New York Mets in the 2016 NL wild card when it was still a one-game playoff before expanding to a best-of-three series in 2022.