Farhan Zaidi’s résumé sounds almost as eclectic as his background.
He is a Muslim and Canadian of Pakistani descent who grew up in the Philippines. He has two degrees in economics: a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.
He has worked in consulting, in business development for a division of a sports magazine, and in the Oakland Athletics’ front office for the last 10 years as a forward-thinking, statistical-minded disciple of General Manager Billy Beane.
The Los Angeles Dodgers were impressed enough to hire Zaidi and form one of the more intriguing front offices in baseball. Last month, they hired Andrew Friedman away from the Tampa Bay Rays to be their president of baseball operations. Now, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, Zaidi is slated to become the team’s general manager.
In other words, two executives with experience building winners out of small-market teams will now have the task of applying those same principles to the Dodgers, the team with the highest payroll in baseball last season.
Zaidi’s hiring seemed to be a bold move, and it reinforced a trend in which statistic-minded executives are taking increasingly important positions across baseball. Theo Epstein has been given the job of turning around the Chicago Cubs, and now Friedman and Zaidi are in Los Angeles.
Friedman also has an interesting background. He was working in finance, with no real professional baseball experience, when he first met the Rays’ principal owner, Stuart Sternberg, in the early 2000s. The Rays hired him, and by the time he was 28 he had worked his way up to general manager.
Under Friedman’s guidance, the Rays became the A’s of the American League East. He built teams around young, inexpensive but talented players, and filled out the roster by making savvy free-agent signings. And he was unafraid to trade those young players as they approached free agency to restock the roster with more young talent.
Beane had been doing something similar in Oakland for years.
The culture change around the Rays was nothing short of stunning. In the Rays’ first 10 years of existence, they won no more than 70 games in a season. In six of Friedman’s last seven years there, they had winning seasons, finished with at least 90 wins five times, and won the pennant in 2008.
With the A’s, Zaidi was widely credited for his part in the signing of Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban defector who became a star from the time he arrived in 2012.
“He’s absolutely brilliant,” Beane said of Zaidi in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle this year. “He has a great qualitative mind, but also a creative mind. The ability to look at things both micro and macro is unique, and Farhan could do whatever he wants to do, not just in this game, but in any sport or any business. I’m more worried about losing him to Apple or Google than I am to another team.”