Bruce Bochy walked away in October, Madison Bumgarner left soon after, Larry Baer has stepped (or been nudged) slightly into the background and now Buster Posey has opted out of the 2020 season.
And that, of course, followed the departures of Brian Sabean, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Santiago Casilla, Javier López, Jeremy Affeldt and Dave Righetti, among many others.
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What’s left? Unless Pablo Sandoval makes the Opening Day roster, and that is no sure thing, zero Giants players from 2010 will be on the 2020 roster, which isn’t an unusual amount of attrition, but the biggest departures have hit most recently and hit hardest. Because of the totality of it. Because of the void in connections to the Giants’ rise and all those parades.
But there isn’t a void in leadership. Farhan Zaidi is the leader of the organization, his top lieutenants are Gabe Kapler and Scott Harris, and through these uncertain pandemic days, the social justice protests and everything else about 2020, most of all, Zaidi and his staff have projected clear-eyed, authentic leadership.
That doesn’t mean the Giants will be contenders in this shortened season or even in 2021, when Posey is back, or even beyond that. Zaidi and Harris have to acquire the right players and develop the ones they have and Kapler has to manage the games and the clubhouse wisely for the Giants to get back to the glory days of Bochy, Sabean, Bumgarner, Lincecum and the early days of Posey and Sandoval. That’s still a bunch of unanswered questions. We shall see.
The truth of the last few months, though, is that dire times either summon the best out of leaders or they spotlight the worst, and Zaidi has been at his best as he’s worked to set up this training camp, prepare for 2020 and defend the safety of his staffers by dropping some F-bombs in an interview with The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly responding to a ridiculous Scottsdale city councilman not long ago.
The Giants really needed a leader to start to resuscitate the franchise when they hired Zaidi in November 2018. They needed Zaidi to hire the right manager after Bochy’s retirement in October and Zaidi picked Kapler. And the Giants need someone smart and decisive right now, to set up the health protocols and guide players and staffers into the season. They need an advocate and a central core philosophy. They need someone everybody can believe in, even if he decides to drop a few curse words in public, or maybe because of it.
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“My mom has let me know that I’ve used up my public quota for swear words,” Zaidi told me on my podcast earlier this week, “so I wouldn’t expect any more out of me.”
We had a conversation on Wednesday, two days before Posey announced that he was opting out of this season to protect the health of his family after he and his wife, Kristen, adopted newborn twins who are still in neonatal intensive care. But it was more than telling that Zaidi and Kapler spoke for the organization in response on Friday, both with compassion and respect for Posey’s decision, and that Baer, who was on the call, did not request or was not asked to speak.
Zaidi speaks for the Giants now. And over the last few months, his credibility as a leader has only been enhanced by Kapler’s thoughtful words and appearances — they’ve been strengthening each other, the way Bochy and Sabean did for so long. Again, we have no idea if Zaidi and Kapler can bring the Giants to anywhere close to the heights that Bochy and Sabean did three times. But everybody has been looking to the new tandem and they’ve been delivering. They’ve had to.
“Yeah, and I go even further than that and say that as a league and as an organization we’re talking about how the health and safety of our players and staff is going to be our priority,” Zaidi said on Wednesday. “So those can’t just be words. We have to back it up with action and it has to be backed up by measures like we’ve taken, in reconfiguring our ballpark, have as much of our activity outdoors. It’s going to manifest itself in supplemental testing, which is something that we’re looking into in addition to what the league is mandating.
“It does come with being in a leadership position in this environment. Getting back to work to whatever degree we can right now, certainly making the environment as safe as possible. We can’t just say it’s the priority. We have to back that up with action.”
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So the Giants might do more-frequent testing than the every-other-day cadence required by MLB protocols?
“We’re evaluating the possibility of doing more frequent tests based on what may be available in the area,” Zaidi said. “And different parts of the country obviously have different capacity constraints right now in terms of tests. Some areas, there’s no testing capacity. In others, there is testing capacity available. So obviously, we want to make sure that we’re doing that responsibly. But if it’s available, we certainly want to look into that.”
Again, the conversation was held before Posey’s opt-out announcement but while there was serious question what Posey would do this season. So I asked Zaidi about the uncertainty and about how the team could address players’ concerns about avoiding COVID-19 infections.
“It’s ultimately a decision that every player’s going to have to make and people are dealing with different family circ*mstances,” Zaidi said. “But frankly, even a player who’s single, living by themselves, if they don’t feel comfortable in this environment, they have the right to opt out and we would respect that. Because this is not the normal course of business. We’ve given the same message to our front-office staff, which is for those who are on the list to be in the ballpark, only come in when you’re comfortable. …
“So I totally respect what Buster is saying. I think there’s reason to be encouraged by what’s happened since we’ve started. We obviously had some positive tests in the industry on intake (when they reported for camp last week). But the second wave of tests have shown a really low rate. And we had all of our guys clear (Tuesday) on our second test, (which was) our first test since starting camp. So as long as everybody feels that the environment that we’re in is not kind of conducive to infections, I think that there will be a growing confidence and people will feel increasingly comfortable. But it was always going to take an adjustment period and I think we’re right in the middle of it now.”
Back to the Scottsdale issue: When councilman Guy Phillips stood on a stage and mocked the protests over George Floyd’s death and then ripped off a mask, rolling his eyes and saying “insanity,” Zaidi’s tart response started off with, “I mean, f*ck that guy. You can quote me on that. f*ck that guy.”
Tremendous. On Wednesday, I asked Zaidi if he’s heard anything from Phillips or other Scottsdale officials.
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“I know our organization and some of the people that have more day-to-day contact with people in the city. They have been in more contact,” Zaidi said. “I think the city of Scottsdale was very clear that Guy Phillips’ words were not representative of the city or the city government’s feelings. They, I think appropriately, distanced themselves from those words. But I have not heard from him directly.”
I asked: Given Phillips’ mocking of the social protests, did Zaidi feel the need, as a minority in a very public and powerful role, to say something now particularly during these times?
“I have to say, if this had happened a month ago or a couple months ago, I probably would’ve forwarded the tweet or the video to a bunch of people I know and said, ‘Isn’t this ridiculous that this guy said that?’ And that’s probably all I would’ve done,” Zaidi said. “I think in the world we’re living in now, there’s a greater responsibility to speak up and speak out against those kinds of actions. And we’re just talking about the responsibilities of leadership, with the state of the world right now, that’s one of them. It’s not enough to send around messages to your friends on how bothered you were by something. If you have a platform, it’s important to do that in a more public way.
“Again, there were obviously two separate parts to that. One was the beginning comment, the use of the phrase ‘I can’t breathe,’ which was, you know, completely stunned. And beyond that is the whole notion of dismissing the importance of masks. You’ve got Tucker Carlson on Fox News talking about there’s not even a dispute about the efficacy and importance of masks right now (note: Carlson has since reversed his opinion). This is not a controversial subject. And so for a public official to be dismissing it or making a civil liberties issue out of it, I thought was not just ridiculous but offensive. Obviously, one of the issues with masks is it’s not just about whether you want to take the risk of infection yourself. You’re happy to direct it back on other people. There’s a real negative externality to your refusal to wear a mask. That’s where it stops becoming an issue of civil liberty and more becomes an issue of public safety and responsibility to your fellow citizens.”
What has the response been from people in the Giants organization to your comments?
“I think I said it to Andy, ‘You know, I speak for a lot of people when I say that,'” Zaidi said. “That was kind of corroborated from some of the messages I got. That’s even when certain positions may seem blatantly obvious or like it should go without saying, it’s important to call these things out. It’s something that’ll help our society move forward in a way I think that a lot of us feel is really necessary.”
Other highlights from our conversation …
• Zaidi has publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement several times in recent weeks, including on a video with several other MLB executives.
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“It can’t just be about words, it’s gotta be about actions,” Zaidi told me. “To me, the notion of Black Lives Matter … people are trying to politicize it, and there is an important political element of it. But it’s not the way some detractors are trying to characterize it. And for me, for us as an organization, to be promoting that message, that is not a political statement. It’s a statement of values and it’s a call to action. And we’ve had internal conversations as an organization about improving our representation both within the organization, being advocates in the community and we’re continuing to work towards those things. I think as this season progresses, we’re going to have more announcements along those lines.”
• On making quick roster evaluations for the July 23 Opening Day and beyond in this abbreviated training camp: “Yeah, you kind of have to. It’s not the ordinary camp where people joke about overevaluating the first bullpen or the first BP when Opening Day is six weeks away. We’re talking being only a couple weeks away from getting started now. So everything you see from everybody from Day 1 and Minute 1 of camp counts. We’ve been doing live BPs and probably have to view the stuff that pitchers are showing now as a good indication of what it’s going to look like when the season starts. I would say the evaluation is happening like we’re close to Opening Day, which we really are.”
• The Giants are scheduled to play the Dodgers 10 times in 60 games; seven of those are set for Dodger Stadium and all of them are in the Giants’ first 17 games. So Zaidi and Kapler are going to know pretty quickly how they stack up on the road against the perennial NL West favorites.
“It’s going to be a little less daunting not having to deal with the fan traffic coming into Dodger Stadium,” the former Dodgers executive said with a chuckle.
“They’re obviously a very strong team, strong contender, and they play well in their home ballpark. But ultimately, if you want to compete, you’ve got to compete against the best. You’ve got to compete against the best in your division. And everybody’s going to be playing this unbalanced schedule. … It just so happens that for us that strength of schedule’s going to be higher than most. We get to play our counterparts (the A’s in interleague play) across the Bay. They’re going to be a really good team this year as well. So yeah, it’s definitely a tough schedule, but it’s not unexpected, given that we had a sense of how this schedule was going to be constructed as the quarantine period wore on. Our guys are up to the challenge. It’s always fun going down there and always fun playing the Dodgers. …
“We’ll learn a lot about our team and, I guess, in particular, we’ll learn about how we stack up against the Dodgers, who are the clear favorites in our division. In that sense, it could be instructive. But as much as anything, in a 60-game schedule, every game’s going to mean a ton, whether it’s early, whether it’s late. … I think what teams’ records look like early on is going to drive a lot of activity the rest of the way.”
• Zaidi used just about every day and every possible method of acquisition last year to recraft the Giants’ roster and entire system. He won’t have the time or conditions to do it in 2020, but he said it isn’t as necessary now.
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“I think that’s the biggest takeaway, for us — we feel pretty good about the group we have internally,” Zaidi said. “That’s not to say we’re not going to look for ways to upgrade or players that we’ve had our eye on for a while, not try to take a chance on acquiring them. … But definitely feel like we’re a deeper organization than we were coming in to 2019. So we don’t have the same imperative to be as active as we were in improving our depth.
“There is the added complication that with every transaction now you’re going to be moving people around, people are going to be getting on planes. There’s certainly going to be some added exposure in that environment. It’s going to be interesting just on a league-wide basis whether we see fewer transactions.”
• I asked specifically if Zaidi could see the Giants having interest in Yasiel Puig, the former Dodgers outfielder who played for Cincinnati and Cleveland last year and is a free agent.
“Right now, we’re not having active conversations with really anybody outside the organization,” Zaidi said. “We’re still focused on evaluating what we have in camp. And we certainly have had guys step forward, guys like Darin Ruf, and certainly want to see what Jaylin Davis can do, give him a chance in the outfield. So right now, we’re not looking outside the organization at all.”
• Without any minor-league play this season, could the Giants maybe speed up the process on top prospects like Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos? Again, our conversation took place before the Posey announcement, but I still don’t believe Zaidi is in any rush to race Bart up to take some of the major-league reps behind the plate.
“It’s a really tough one and those guys have certainly impressed early on in camp,” Zaidi said. “But in my mind, one of the challenges in camp between pitchers and position players, with the pitchers, you’ve got radar guns on these guys, all kinds of pitch-tracking, can see spin rates. It’s easy to compare whether a guy is in midseason form and what his stuff looks like to what it looked like, say, last year. You know, with position players, it’s tougher. We’re not going to have a bunch of live reps. And it’s harder to say, particularly young players like that, if what you see in camp can give you a sense that they’re ready to hit major-league pitching on a day-in, day-out basis. That’s going to be challenging for us. I don’t really have an answer in terms of how we’re going to process it.
“It’s going to be more challenging than it would be in a normal environment, where you can look at a guy’s Double-A stats and that can help you decide to promote him, look at a guy’s Triple-A stats, we’re just not going to have those same metrics. It’s going to be a more complicated decision whether to promote guys, to promote our prospects.”
(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
