Zaidi's History of Talent Acquisition

One reasons I and others like Zaidi is his history of talent acquisition, as GM of the Dodgers and now as President of Baseball Operations for the Giants.  That is the reason I was so strongly for Sabean during the late 2000's when it seemed like I was the only one to think that of him, at least on the main Giants board.   I thought I would examine Zaidi's best acquisitions as Dodger GM, and how that looked in 2019, now that he leads the Giants.

ogc thoughts

Find Young Things

Farhan Zaidi is known for finding young producing players among the driftwood of the MLB minor league system.  Muncy is the example most pointed out as to what he might be able to do for the Giants.  So I thought I would look into the history of his teams finding young players, starting with his time with the Dodgers.

Zaidi was named the GM of the Dodgers during the off-season after the 2014 season, so I started looking at the Dodger's roster bWAR contributions, and highlighting the prospects still in their 20's who contributed at least 1.0 bWAR at some point during Zaidi's time there.

• Yasmani Grandal:  Acquired in the trade with the Padres for Matt Kemp (his bad contract was taken on the the Padres and yet they still gave up talent to get him; similar to the Melancon trade with the Braves, for the Giants), he produce 1.4 bWAR in 2015 (age 26 season), then 2.7, 2.2, and 3.3, for a total of 9.6 bWAR over four seasons.
• Kike Hernandez:  He also produced 1.4 bWAR in 2015 (age 23 season), then 0.0, 1.4, 2.8, 1.5, for a total of 7.1 bWAR over five seasons.
• Kenta Maeda:  An area the Giants have not even well in, signing Nippon League posted players, Maeda signed a low base contract with a lot of bonuses basically tied to production (i.e. health in staying on the pitching staff instead of the DL/IL) before the 2016 season and produced 2.8 bWAR in 2016 (age 28 season), then 1.8, 0.4, 1.8, for a total of 6.8 bWAR over four seasons.
• Chris Taylor:  Famously acquired from Mariners and then had his batting mechanics fixed to what most major leaguers use (much like what Hunter Pence did after his big contract with the Giants ended), he produced 4.2 bWAR in 2017 (age 26 season), then 4.1 and 2.4, for a total of 10.7 bWAR over 3 seasons.
• Austin Barnes:  Acquired in the same trade as Kike, he wasn't that good his first couple of seasons, producing only -0.1 bWAR in 2015 and -0.2 bWAR in 2016, but did well in 2017 with 2.6 bWAR (age 27 season), before falling back to 0.5 in 2018, and 0.1 in 2019.  Still, he produced 2.9 bWAR over his five seasons so far with the Dodgers.
• Max Muncy:  The shining example most use for when talking about what Zaidi might do for the Giants, Muncy was released by the A's in early 2017, the Dodgers worked on his batting stroke during that season, and he broke out with a 4.2 bWAR in 2018 (age 27 season) and followed that up with 5.7 bWAR in 2019, for a total of 9.9 bWAR over two seasons.

These were the top examples of acquisitions for the Dodgers during Zaidi's time with them, and over the four seasons he was with them, plus 2019, these six players added 47.0 bWAR over the past five seasons, or just over 9 bWAR added per season on average.  And it could have been more if they didn't trade Zach Eflin, who produced 3.3 bWAR over the past four seasons, 3.7 bWAR over the past two. 

Of course, there were some negatives, as well as smaller positive productions, but I don't know all the Dodger's transactions nor do I care to.  Suffice it to say, the six additions above contributed a lot to the Dodger's dominance during the Friedman era so far.  By year, for these six players, they added 2.7 bWAR in 2015, 5.3 bWAR in 2016, 12.2 bWAR in 2017, 15.3 bWAR in 2018, and 11.5 bWAR in 2019 (drop due to loss of Grandal to free agency, plus Taylor and Kike declined as well).

One big question regarding his history with the Dodgers is how much was him and how much was Friedman and others in the front office.  With Zaidi, the Dodgers had a streak from 2015 to 2018, four seasons, of finding and/or developing a 20's prospect to produce at least 1.4 bWAR:  Grandal and Hernandez starting in 2015; Maeda in 2016; Taylor in 2017 (plus Barnes had a good season in 2017, after two poor ones); Muncy in 2018.  The streak was broken in 2019 when the Dodgers did not add any new player who added any positive WAR in 2019, and that contributed to the drop in 2019, as well. 

This suggests that it was Zaidi's machinations and talent identification that led the Dodgers to find these good players.

Zaidi's Giants Young Finds

Zaidi was able to acquire the following younger than 30 positive contributors for the Giants in 2019:

• Mike Yastrzemski (28 YO):  2.8 bWAR (which worked out to a 4.2 bWAR season had he played a full season at this rate)
• Alex Dickerson (29 YO):  1.0 bWAR (roughly 4 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Tyler Rogers (28 YO):  0.7 bWAR (roughly 2-3 bWAR seasonal rate; I'm including him as part of Zaidi's young finds because the Giants had plenty of seasons to check him out in the majors but neglected to do so)
• Mauricio Dubon (24 YO):  0.4 bWAR (roughly 2-3 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Trevor Gott (26 YO):  0.2 bWAR
• Jandel Gustave (26 YO):  0.2 bWAR (roughly 0.5 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Williams Jerez (27 YO):  0.2 bWAR (roughly 1.5-2.0 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Cristhian Adames (27 YO):  0.1 bWAR (roughly 2-3 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Sam Selman (28 YO):  0.1 bWAR (roughly 0.5 bWAR seasonal rate)
• Enderson Franco (26 YO):  0.1 bWAR (roughly 1-2 bWAR seasonal rate)

With the finds of Yastrzemski and Dickerson, Zaidi has continued his streak of finding one or two players who contributed at least 1.0 bWAR to the team.   In addition, Rogers and Dubon produced at a high enough rate that it was likely, had they played enough games, that they would also have been at least 1.0 bWAR producers. 

So Zaidi did pretty well in finding young producers for the Giants.  The above players added 5.8 bWAR to the team (again, of course, there were negative producers), and a handful look like they will be contributors in some significant ways in 2020.  While I think he failed to maximize the 2019 season's possibilities, he at least added a lot of interesting pieces, and 2020 will tell how much more he can find and develop to keep up the streak that started with the Dodgers.

Now we need him to do something similar with finding starting pitchers, he has found hitters and relievers pretty well.  Perhaps that is what Matt Daniels is tasked with.  We need a big hit, like the Astros in changing Gerrit Cole, or, going back further, Zaidi needs his Jason Schmidt find.