[Wrote most of this in mid-October, just never got around to finishing until today's announcement of Zack Minasian as the new GM, so I've added some comments about that]
Just read an article on Fangraphs, written a while ago, regarding how long draft prospects take to reach the majors. It was going to be a key rebuttal regarding the six years people have been complaining that Zaaidi’s had enough time to rebuild the team. Then reality took a left turn.
I was taking off for a vacation in SoCal, to visit my daughter, and was away from my phone since I was driving my wife and I down. So after we checked in, I checked my phone and my brother who also follows the Giants text me "Posey!" And I'm wondering what happened. Then I see The Athletic notifications of articles about Zaidi being replaced by Posey.
So, now, after he’s been fired and replaced by Posey, instead this post will simply be a learning experience for those who don’t understand the player development process very well (which, based on the vast majority of people commenting on The Athletic, is a vast majority of Giants fans; which aligns well with what I experienced when defending Sabean back in 2007-2010).
ogc thoughts
As we all know now, Zaidi has been replaced by Posey, so I thought I would combine my thoughts on the player development process and end with my thoughts about the change in leadership.
Just to be clear where I stood on Zaidi, I was against him being replaced because generally his replacement would be given carte blanc to make drastic changes, because his firing would be an indictment on his team strategy, that itt was not working, and need to be replaced. I liked the direction the team was headed in, though I wasn’t sure that Zaidi would be the one to get the team back to another championship. I thought he deserved at least another season.
All that said, I am okay with the change.
This is because I want to see what happens with the group of players we have on the 40-man, as well as prospects not on the 40, Bryce Eldridge especially. Plus it looks like the current leader, Michael Holmes, has been good at picking in the draft and will continue to run things. And I think Posey will stay the course, but will definitely do things his way, in terms of finding the next pieces of the roster puzzle. And with the announcement of Zack Minasian as GM, at least so far, it looks like they are not changing much in the organization, other than the PBOps and GM roles, as definitive changes (I think Price left on his own accord).
Those Looking for Big Changes Will Be Disappointed
Because Posey’s statements so far is not one of a leader who thinks that huge changes are needed. In fact, he hasn’t said much more than talking with each department and seeing what’s working and what’s not. That, to me, signals that massive changes are not coming to the Giants organization.
He has changed the GM, but that’s because he needs a GM who can do more heavy lifting for Posey, since he has no FO experience. He also said that he wanted a GM who has a scouting background. Minasian fits both of this, having helped in Milwaukee with trades, and being the lead in pro scouting for the Giants, with the bonus of already knowing all the Giants prospects and players, and thus he can jump in immediately and help Posey with trades (and trade ideas) when the GM meetings happen, in a short while.
So this is less a regime change than a shuffling of the leader, and continuing the current strategy. Which leads me to suspect that the GM hire is more of finding and training the next BOps leader who would take over for Posey when they are ready, similar to how Quinn was hired to keep things running while training Sabean to take over. Minasian is still very young, I think 41 YO, and I don't think Posey wants to do this long term, and with both signed to a three year contract, it could be very much like when Quinn/Sabean ran the operations with the objective of naming Sabean the leader when he was ready.
I also expect both Sabean and Evans to be hired as Special Advisers for Posey, so that he has their extensive experience on tap when he has questions or need advice.
So I see Zaidi as a scapegoat and sacrificial lamb to appease fans, and to buy more time for the team to continue their current strategy, which will still have ups and downs because they are waiting for prospects to advance, and so the road will be bumpy, because, as we saw with Doval, sometimes players regress.
Why do I want to see how the current roster develop? Because, so far, Zaidi has guided the organization towards one with a strong pitching and defense profile. And with the Minasian announcement today, Posey said that the Giants will be focused on what worked before: leveraging the ballpark by winning with pitching and defense, improving fundamental play. The roster building aligns with the core principles that I've laid out with my business plan for building a baseball team capable of winning championships. FYI, I plan on updating this to account for the fact that Posey is taking over, plus to include additional chapters that I've added since.
The Draft is Very Hard, Basically a Crapshoot
The draft is harder than imagined, because the media and teams are always focused on first round picks, but the fact is that the odds are stacked against teams, and yet it is still the best way to rebuild because there’s no better way. It’s the ying and yang of baseball player development, which is appropriate for a sport where a player failing 70%+ of the time could still be a very good player.
The #1 overall pick has been good almost half of the time (good I defined as 18 bWAR in my latest draft study). The odds then drops to the mid-20% of finding a good player, and by the time we reach where .500 level teams are, we are down to 11-16%, which means it can take 6-9 years of first round picks to find a good player. By the end of the first round, where the playoff teams, odds are down to 5%, which works out to finding ONE good player every 20 first round draft picks (or 20 years).
That’s the purgatory that the Giants were in from the early 1970’s until they set the franchise record for losses in 1985, because the odds of finding a good player to lead your team is just that bad when you don’t tank badly. It takes a long time to determine whether it is poor picking or just bad luck in draft selection. Sabean didn't have his first good draft pick until he picked Cain in 2002 draft, and we didn't know that he was good until Cain had his first good season in 2007 and then had another good season in 2008, 12 years after Sabean was hired.
And it’s not like it’s suddenly easy by tanking, it often takes several years of tanking to find that key player. GM Bobby Cox had to tank the Braves 6 years to find Chipper Jones and determine he's the one, but once they knew what they had, he named himself manager and started his great Braves managerial stint. And as we saw during the same era as Sabean making great picks, teams like the Pirates, Orioles, and Rays all had similar picks (in fact, these three teams, as well as the Royals, could have selected Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey instead of the Giants) and never won a championship, and the Pirates and Orioles never really competed. So tanking has not been a panacea, and with the new draft position rules, preventing repeating Top 10 picks, it is even harder now.
Prospects Take Time To Develop
On top of that, beyond the fact that the vast majority of draft picks fail to become that good player we are all looking for, it often takes these prospects 4-6 years to not only reach the majors, but then to have their first good year. Then you need another year to show that it’s not a fluke. Cain was drafted in 2002, but he didn’t have his first good season until 2007, Ramos in 2017 had his first in 2024 (likely delayed by missing key development time in 2020 pandemic season).
And a Fangraph study confirms this need for player development time. His study estimates that the average times (conservatively, so it could be shorter) to reach the majors are:
HS: 6.5 years
4 Year College: 4.5 years
And that's just reaching the majors, and does not include the time needed to adjust to the majors and produce a good season. For example, Chase Utley reached the majors only three seasons after he was drafted, but he didn't reach his great seasons until the fifth season after he was drafted. He needed a couple of seasons to figure out how to dominate as a player.
Drafts Are Staggered, It is Not Like They Were All Drafted in 2019
From this view, Zaidi’s first draft in 2019 has only had 4 full seasons of professional baseball playing time, same as his 2020 draft. They are just entering the window, and yet already found a good proven player in Bailey, and a good season from Fitzgerald, and Harrison was pitching well enough until his last two starts, likely affected by his injury, killed his overall stats. Schmitt is also looking interesting as well.
This also means that all his following drafts have had even less development time. Yet we have Roupp, Black, Whisenhunt, and most importantly, Eldridge, showing that they should have MLB roles soon enough.
So his players development has been advanced, and yet there is still time on the clock for normal development, more to come potentially. So his rebuild hasn’t been given enough time to mature develop and matriculate.
Of course, that's all water under the bridge now that he's gone, but doesn't change the fact that it will still take some time for this core to emerge, and I'm seeing a 2025-26 window for the leap to competitiveness, dependent upon how quickly Bryce Eldridge, Kyle Harrison, and Patrick Bailey take their next giant leap ahead (Eldridge reaching majors and hitting, Harrison rising from average pitcher in the 4.00 ERA range to a good one in the 3.00 ERA range, and Bailey hitting all through the season). It also depends upon Birdsong, Roupp, Black, and Whisenhunt continuing to progress, as well as Ramos and Fitzgerald, and likely Matos, Wisely, and Sabol.
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