SAN FRANCISCO — The most significant news at the Giants’ introduction of Bob Melvin on Wednesday had nothing to do with the new manager.
After all, we learned that he was coming back to the Bay yesterday.
No, the most important bit of new information was that the Giants and director of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi have agreed on a new contract.
That secret extension that’s been talked about for weeks? Well, it’s public now. The Giants have officially doubled down on the Zaidi era.
For a fanbase that is becoming more radicalized against analytics by the day, extending Zaidi — not a real “baseball man” in so many fans’ eyes — will be treated with scorn.
But the extension — which, like Melvin’s new deal, will run through the 2026 season — was necessary if San Francisco wants to be competitive this upcoming season.
You don’t have to like it, but this deal had to be done.
“We have full confidence in Farhan,” Giants chairman Greg Johnson said Wednesday “And for the stability of the organization, we’ve agreed in principle for a deal for Farhan through ’26, and we’ll announce that shortly.”
When the Giants’ brass, led by Johnson, decided to let Zaidi fire manager Gabe Kapler on Sept. 29, they made it necessary to extend the team’s chief baseball officer.
It would have been wholly untenable for Zaidi — entering a lame-duck 2024 — to spearhead not only a managerial search, but also a critical offseason that requires a roster shake-up.
And even though the Bay area is home to Melvin and the Giants were, as he claimed Wednesday, his dream managerial job, there’s not much chance Melvin would have taken the San Francisco gig if Zaidi were in contractual limbo.
By extending Zaidi and aligning his contract with Melvin’s, the Giants can show free agents, big and small, that the organization has a unified front.
If you’re a Giants fan who dreams of landing Shohei Ohtani or any other top players this upcoming offseason, that’s crucial.
Because if Melvin — who was looking to escape a toxic situation in San Diego — wasn’t going to come to San Francisco without organizational stability, why would a player like Ohtani with no ties to the area and plenty of viable suitors come?
“I wouldn’t have signed here past him,” Melvin said, referring to Zaidi’s contract situation. “I did not want to go past him.”
Zaidi told me Wednesday that he knew going into the managerial search that he knew he’d be around for as long as the manager he hired.
“I would say that, yeah,” Zaidi said.
“They’ve been going on for a while,” he said of his negotiations with the Giants. “We figured sort of lining it up with this search and announcing them together like we did today made sense for a number of reasons.”
And while circumstance might have forced the Giants’ hand on this move, that isn’t to say this is bad.
At least from the baseball side, the Giants’ organization is in a much better situation now than when Zaidi took over.
Remember, when Zaidi was hired for the job, it was arguably the worst in baseball.
Now, it has a quality farm system, payroll flexibility, and an outstanding, proven manager.
This sort of progress cannot be overlooked or downplayed. Zaidi has achieved something in his time in charge.
That said, the Giants have clearly plateaued. After an inexplicable 107-win 2021, the team’s 160-164 record in the last two seasons has made a lot of sense, looking at the roster.
But this fanbase and market deserve more than that, even if a slightly .500 team that does well in the postseason (a lá the Arizona Diamondbacks) is the ideal for an ownership group that Johnson declared Wednesday prioritizes “breaking even.”
In other organizations, Zaidi would have been out the door with Kapler. Call that rash or justified — it’s the truth.
But the man in charge of the Giants we care about (the ones on the field) has been given a second chance to turn the black-and-orange operation into a winning machine — one that builds, develops, rehabilitates, and, yes, buys top players.
Mediocrity won’t play with the real bosses — the fans — any longer.
Zaidi has been a master at the bottom end of the roster. He’s built a foundation for this Giants’ organization that desperately needed one.
Can he now become someone who can reel in the big fish in free agency and take a team from solid to excellent?
It’s possible he can do it. He’s as likely as anyone the Giants could have brought from the outside to do it.
So will he?
Like it or not, we will find out over the next few seasons.