California, here we come, right back where we started from

That never made sense as the theme to The OC. They never left! How can you come back when you never leave?

Well, well, well. Looks like the haters have, once again, been proven correct. Farhan Zaidi, who always seemed a little too Dodgery, a bit too beholden to the boys in blue, a skosh too much of an Angelino for San Francisco. And guess where he’s headed now? That’s right: back to Chavez Ravine itself, the hub of iniquity, and the birthplace of vice itself¹.

Is this proof positive that Zaidi was always a Dodger mole? That his main mission was to act as Andrew Friedman’s double agent inside the San Francisco Giants, sabotaging everything he could touch? Can we be absolutely, lock-down certain that every single one of the Giants’ failings over the last few years was a deliberate act of destruction by a man whose only loyalties lay with Yasiel Puig and Clayton Kershaw???

Probably, yeah. But it’s not like we can do anything about it.

It is a little funny that back when Zaidi got fired, there was a contingent of Giants fans who objected because they thought he deserved one more year to finish overhauling the farm system. Bryce Eldridge is so close to the majors! And those arms, too! We’ve been hearing about Carson Whisenhunt for so long, and he’s knocking on the door. And then there are the young guys who’ve already debuted, but are just waiting to take the next step: Luis Matos, Wade Meckler, Mason Black, and their ilk. Didn’t Farhan deserve a shot at reaping the fruits of his development system?

And the answer — the fairly obvious answer now, really — is no. Because the farm system is bad. Zaidi ran everything for six years, and yeah yeah yeah, the pandemic screwed everything up, but it screwed everything up for everyone, and there are teams who recovered well, and then there are the San Francisco Giants. Baseball America currently ranks them 24th, Keith Law at The Athletic ranks them 26th, and even the in-season MLB.com rankings in August only had them 23rd.

Yes, the Giants graduated some talent over the last couple of years, but they’re all some variation of “nice player, but.” Patrick Bailey’s a nice player, but his offense has been terrible in the second half for each of the last two years, which keeps him from being a star. Heliot Ramos is a nice player, but he also fell off hard after the All-Star Break last year, and also was a below average hitter against righties, who make up a large percentage of pitchers. Tyler Fitzgerald is a nice player, but he had a .380 BABIP last year, so it probably won’t last. Grant McCray is a nice player, but he also has to take at bats.

If the non-Eldridge cupboard is pretty much bare after that — and basically every prospect watcher agrees that it is — then what do you really have to show for years of Zaidi’s work on the farm? How many of the players in the last paragraph are you confident will start for the Giants all year? Bailey, for sure. But the rest of them haven’t proven anything yet. No one was more excited than me about Ramos’s breakout season, but it was really a breakout two months, and then a replacement level finish. Fitzgerald has a chance to start all year at second base even if he’s hitting .240, but that’s only due to a shocking lack of middle infield depth in the Giants system. And McCray struck out 43% of the time in the majors last year, which is not a major league level performance.

I don’t mean to slight Kyle Harrison by omission here, but his season last year, though fine, wasn’t nearly as electric as we were all led to believe it would be. One more who we can call a nice player, but…

I also don’t want to slight any of the bullpen guys, especially Ryan Walker, but the variability on bullpen arms is so high that it’s tough to predict any of them will be long-term contributors. Remember how great Camilo Doval looked in 2023?

That (along with Matos, Meckler, and so on) is the generation of Giants prospects that the farm system was able to graduate under Farhan Zaidi, and while it’s much better than nothing, it’s also not the Death Star of a farm system that the team was relying on. This was going to be the thing — like the Dodgers in the middle of the last decade, the Giants were going to find a new star every year. The Giants were going to have their own Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger and Corey Seager and Chris Taylor and Kiké Hernandez and Max Muncy and Will Smith and Walker Buehler. Instead, they didn’t.

This is why no one is currently bemoaning the Giants firing Zaidi. He’d shot all his arrows but one, and while that one is hopefully going to be a Patriot Arrow-type success, it’s going to be a long fallow period until the next wave comes through, assuming it ever does.

Of course he’s going back to LA, where he was an important part of the front office that poured the concrete for their run. Of course they’ll know exactly how to use him. Maybe he was miscast as a middle-of-the-order President of Baseball Operations, and would be better served as a platoon guy, who can handle analytics but will get lifted for a pinch hitter when it comes to dealing with people. Or maybe this was an idea in the back of his mind all along: if it doesn’t work out, hey, he can always go back to the Dodgers.

Is this his reward for not being good enough? Are there no consequences for his failure here? Will his friends and business associates shield him from all accountability for his many crimes against FUCK I’m not talking about baseball guys, sorry! I tried! Newsletter over! We’ll do our best to stick to sports on Thursday².

1. Citation needed

2. Probably. Maybe. Depending on how I feel.