The Dodgers have hired Farhan Zaidi as a special advisor, reports Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. He will also be assisting Dodgers part-owner and chairman Mark Walter with his other sports interests.
It’s a homecoming for Zaidi, 48, as he has worked for the Dodgers before. He got his start in the Athletics organization but was hired by the Dodgers in November of 2014, working as general manager under president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
Four years later, Zaidi was hired away by a divisional rival. The Giants made him president of baseball operations for that club in November of 2018. His first two seasons in San Francisco weren’t remarkable, with the club finishing just below .500 in 2019 and 2020. But in 2021, the club amazingly won 107 games, narrowly edging the Dodgers for the division title. Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep that going, finishing the next three seasons with a win total in the 79 to 81 range. At the end of September, Zaidi was fired and replaced by Buster Posey.
In December, it was reported that Zaidi was in talks to come back to the Dodgers in some capacity, which has now come to fruition. A person who has led a baseball operations department will often take on a lesser role as a sort of temporary measure, waiting for another opportunity to open up. Alex Anthopoulos was the general manager of the Blue Jays through the 2015 season, then took a role as vice-president of baseball operations with the Dodgers. He departed a little over a year later when a chance opened up to run the baseball operations department in Atlanta.
Based on Zaidi’s title in this role, it seems fair to assume that this will also be a bit less hands-on than his other recent gigs. He can contribute to the Dodgers a bit while keeping himself available for future front office opportunities that might open up. Walter is also a co-owner of the Premier League club Chelsea, the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA, in addition to owning the Professional Women’s Hockey League. Zaidi’s new role will also see him contributing to those ventures in some undefined way.