Farhan Zaidi out, Buster Posey in at top of Giants baseball ops

SAN FRANCISCO — After six seasons, Farhan Zaidi is done leading the Giants’ baseball operations.

The new guy? You might have heard of him.

In a release Monday morning, less than 24 hours after they ended a disappointing 80-82 campaign, the Giants announced the organization decided to “part ways” with Zaidi and replace him with longtime fan favorite Buster Posey, whose influence had increased since purchasing an ownership stake in 2022.

“We are looking for someone who can define, direct and lead this franchise’s baseball philosophy and we feel that Buster is the perfect fit,” chairman Greg Johnson said in a statement. “Buster has the demeanor, intelligence and drive to do this job, and we are confident that he and Bob Melvin will work together to bring back winning baseball to San Francisco.”

Johnson, Posey and Melvin are scheduled to address reporters Tuesday morning at Oracle Park.

In six seasons under Zaidi’s leadership, the Giants amassed a record of 453-417 (.521) but missed the playoffs five times. Outside of their 107-win 2021 season, they didn’t claim a winning record in any of Zaidi’s other five years and on Sunday secured their fourth losing campaign with a loss to the Cardinals.

“We appreciate Farhan’s commitment to the organization and his passion for making an impact in our community during his six years with the Giants,” Johnson said in the statement. “Ultimately, the results have not been what we had hoped, and while that responsibility is shared by all of us, we have decided that a change is necessary.

“While these decisions are not easy, we believe it is time for new leadership to elevate our team so we can consistently contend for championships. I wish Farhan and his family nothing but the best moving forward.”

The decision to insert Posey, 37, signals a shift in direction from Zaidi, an MIT graduate who rose through the front-office ranks on the analytics side in the Athletics and Dodgers organizations before the Giants hired him in 2018.

Zaidi, 47, fired Bruce Bochy after the 2019 season and replaced him with his hand-picked successor, Gabe Kapler, while introducing a new era of baseball in San Francisco defined by advanced stats, creative pitching solutions, platoon advantages and winning at the margins. It worked tremendously when it unearthed gems such as LaMonte Wade Jr. and Mike Yastrzemski, and they battled the Dodgers tooth-and-nail in 2021, eventually claiming an unlikely NL West crown.

They failed to recapture that magic, though, and after collapsing last September, Zaidi fired Kapler and acknowledged a need to consider other viewpoints. He replaced him with Melvin, a two-decade veteran of the manager’s seat, a Bay Area native and a former catcher with the Giants.

At the time, Johnson announced that Zaidi had received an extension that lined up his contract with Melvin’s, through 2026. However, the San Francisco Chronicle later reported and Zaidi confirmed that the deal was guaranteed only through 2025, which didn’t prove to be an obstacle when ownership decided to move on.

Now, Posey will take on an even larger role as the franchise turns the page on the Zaidi era.

Posey was born in Georgia but became so entrenched in the Bay Area over his 11 seasons with the Giants that when he announced his surprise retirement after the 2021 season, he only briefly moved his family back to the South before relocating back to the region he spent his playing career.

The beloved catcher debuted in 2009, won Rookie of the Year in 2010, Most Valuable Player in 2012 and played a central role in the franchise’s golden era, winning three World Series championships from 2010 to 2014. In retirement, Posey bought into the ownership group and joined the board of directors.

Zaidi raised the floor, but his dismissal was a result of his inability to also raise the ceiling, either by bringing in or developing top-level talent. It’s hard to know if Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani would have ever seriously considered the Giants, but they might have had a better shot had they boasted a better homegrown core.

Of the six first-round draft picks Zaidi has made, only Patrick Bailey has reached the big leagues, let alone become a core contributor. And because of the signings of Blake Snell and Matt Chapman last offseason, they sacrificed two of their top three picks in this past summer’s amateur draft.

The Giants’ spending this winter — exceeding $400 million in total commitments — brought them over the luxury tax threshold for the first time since 2017 and, they hoped, would turn a 79-win team in 2023 into a postseason contender. But with a roster that only began to take shape late into spring training and would later be derailed by injuries, the team never moved more than four games over .500 and played meaningless baseball for most of September.

The seeds of discontentment within the ownership group began to spread as the month progressed, and The Athletic eventually reported Posey took a leading role in the negotiations with Chapman on his six-year, $151 million extension that was announced Sept. 5.