Changes? Afoot?

Could be!

The big controversy in Giantsland is, of all people, McCovey Cove Dave.

McCovey Cove Dave has been in his kayak in McCovey Cove for hundreds of Giants games since 2001, and has retrieved dozens of home run balls out of the water. He has become…I think even saying “minor celebrity” would be overstating it, but moderately well known to some. He…uh…

Focus. Focus!

On Sunday, Heliot Ramos hit the first ball into the water that a right-handed batter has ever hit. Out of 105 Splash Hits by the Giants, and some smaller number by opposing teams, every one of them had been hit by a lefty, until Ramos hit his game-tying shot on Sunday in the bottom of the ninth inning (the Giants, naturally, would lose in extra innings).

The ball was retrieved by McCovey Cove Dave, who then promptly kept it and refused to give it to Ramos or the Giants. Typically, there’s some negotiation between the team and the fan who caught a milestone home run like that, but in this case, he refused because (as I understand the reports) he was mad that they didn’t give him a discounted parking space in exchange for a different home run ball.

Then, in an interview, McCovey Cove Dave said that he would have given the ball back to Hunter Pence or Pablo Sandoval, because they earned it, or he would give it back to Bruce Eldridge, because Eldridge follows him on social media. Then…

God, this whole story is stupid.

You know what? This guy’s not that interesting, and I can’t even pretend to care about him. Let’s talk about whether Farhan’s getting fired.

In the six seasons that Farhan Zaidi has run the Giants, they have finished over .500 once. Yes, that was a spectacular 107 win season, but it was just one season. In the other five years, they have finished at .500 once and under .500 four times (I’m just assuming that this year’s team will wind up with more losses than wins; if they’d like to prove me wrong, they can start anytime, but anytime probably should have come before mid-September).

That is simply not a good enough record. You can make perfectly reasonable excuses for Zaidi’s first couple years (inherited a terrible roster and a weak farm system in 2019, everything was disrupted by the pandemic in 2020), but he’s had long enough to put his people and his system in place and to run things his way. And his way isn’t leading to a winning team, or a winning culture, or a happy fanbase, or anything positive on the field.

And that’s all before you get to the Matt Chapman contract.

As Andrew Baggarly reported over the weekend, Farhan Zaidi did not negotiate Chapman’s extension. Instead, Buster Posey personally hashed out the main bullet points with Chapman, bypassing both Zaidi and Scott Boras.

Taken on its own, that might not be too telling of a data point. It makes sense that, if a player wants to stay in San Francisco, Boras might try to talk him out of it in order to secure him a bigger contract. Boras’s idea was to use that 6 year, $151 million offer as a starting point. Chapman’s idea was that he could simply take the offer and be happy with it, and since he was able to deal directly with Posey, that’s what happened. It worked out for everyone.

The troubling thing for Zaidi’s job security, though, is that this got leaked. The Giants are generally pretty good at running a tight ship. They don’t leak without a purpose. About a year ago, the leak was that Joc Pederson and some other players were playing the Filipino card game Pusoy in the clubhouse as the season circled the drain. Not only did this pave the way for Pederson to not come back, but it was a glaring data point in the “Kapler lost the clubhouse” discourse, and Kapler was fired within the week.

I don’t know that the Giants will be quite so quick to dismiss Zaidi — I think they want to see how the team finishes the year, because a miraculous finish to end up over .500 might save his job — but this is very clear groundwork laying. Ownership wanted a deal with Chapman and Chapman wanted a deal with Chapman, but Farhan Zaidi, the guy whose job it is to make that deal, couldn’t get it done. Now everyone knows that he can’t necessarily do that part of his job. That’s not a recipe for longevity, especially taking into account that 2024 is the third straight disappointing year for the team.

Does Farhan deserve it? Well, yes, because at some point the team has to turn into a consistent winner and he hasn’t shown that he can make that happen. But also, maybe not, because for the team to be a consistent winner, the farm system has to pump out talent, and it’s just started doing that. This was the most important part of Farhan’s job, and because there wasn’t a minor league season in 2020 he’s really only had 4 years to get it done, and it might actually be getting done, and they’re just going to fire him just as the plan is coming to fruition? I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but you can see why it would be tempting to give him one more year.

On the other hand, this front office might also be too set in their ways and too willing to marginalize talented players who deserve more of a chance than a few scattered at bats here and there. Yes, they developed Heliot Ramos, but they also successfully avoid playing Heliot Ramos in the majors until he was one of exactly three (3) healthy outfielders on the 40-man roster and their hand was forced. We’ve seen the disaster that’s been their handling of Marco Luciano all year. We’ve seen them rush player after player to the majors because they’re so desperate for help, and that probably hasn’t been great for the development of Casey Schmitt or Luis Matos or even Patrick Bailey, who is great defensively and also will hopefully get a hit in August one of these years.

And you have to think that all that factored into ownership getting so frustrated that they sent Posey to deal directly with Chapman, and all that factored into leaking that fact, and all that will factor into the decision they make on Zaidi’s future. But considering the team’s performance and that leak, you have to imagine that they’re already 90% of the way to letting him go. It wasn’t subtle and it wasn’t meant to be. Fans are unhappy with the team under Farhan Zaidi, and that buck, inevitably, will stop. They way to avoid that is to build a good team, but you only get so many chances, and Zaidi might have run out.