One of the tactics that Zaidi has been executing well in his first off-season running the Giants, is his extreme version of what I call, Waiver Roulette.
Waiver Roulette
Basically he has targeted a bunch of young-ish, but on the fringe edge prospects and players, who has shown some good stats previously in their career, and most likely in recent seasons. They were typically not protected under Rule 5, and/or reached the point in their pro career where they are out of option, too good to let go, but not good enough to get that last 25-man roster spot.
The hitters are often good contact hitters who can take walks, resulting in very high OBP, and perhaps using the wrong swing mechanics (like Andres Torres, Emmenuel Burris, and Chris Taylor), they were probably a young speedster taught to swing for the ground to hit grounders that they could run out, and not taught the correct way. When Torres and Taylor were taught the correct way, they blossomed as hitters, whereas Burris (and Gary Brown) languished and eventually were let go by baseball because they could not hit MLB pitching the correct (Ted Williams) way.
The pitchers are typically fireballing, with high K/9 and high K/BB (Zaidi targets good K/BB ratios for both hitters and pitchers). But for whatever reasons, never given the chance.
Whatever their position, they were once a Top 30 prospect for their team, perhaps even Top 100 overall, or even a high round pick in the draft at the start of their career, but just never developed as hoped. They generally have some prospect pedigree, some talent that was valued at an earlier point of their careers, before coming here to the Giants. This is the philosophy that John Barr brought to this organization (don't forget, Barr came from the Dodgers organization, and Zaidi also came from the Dodgers organization that learned some things from Colletti, who was the Giants former assistant GM, way back when.
And Zaiidi appears to have a list of them, and once one shows up on the waiver list, he basically picks that one up, while letting the guy he got earlier go via waivers, to see if they make it through without no other team picking him up. That allowed him to pick up guys like Mike Gerber and John Andreoli, the latter of whom was traded to the Twins to pick up Michael Reed in a trade with the Twins.
All these player acquisitions - whether waiver, trade for cash considerations, or trade for low level prospect - is a high volume operation where some make their way to the Giants minor league system (like Gerber and Andreoli) and others are snatched up away as others play the same game (like Hanser Alberto, Jake Barrett).
This is very much like a fantasy league manager who cycles through all the players who happen to be available, picking up players at a whim, to try to catch fire with one player or another, and if they falter, you flick them back out, and pick up another player for your fantasy team. Which makes sense, Zaidi is famous for playing football fantasy with the Dodger's players.
And whatever it is that a GM/POBO is looking for in a prospect, they can do the same thing in a high volume fashion, like Zaidi is doing, to pick up interesting prospects and store them in the minors as possible trade bait later, and also as possible players you can develop and make into a major league player, like he and LA did with Taylor and Muncy (and Turner before that). This helps him to have trade ammo when it comes time to acquiring the prospects that he really truly wants, since the Giants farm system has a talent deficit right now.
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