In an interview on Foul Territory on Wednesday, Zaidi confirmed he met with the Dodgers and other teams this offseason.
Former Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi was let go as the Giants’ president of baseball operations in September. On December 3, Fabian Ardaya and Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic reported that Zaidi talked with the Dodgers about a possible return to the front office in some role.
On Wednesday, Zaidi was a guest on Foul Territory and confirmed that he met with the Dodgers, among other teams.
“I’m fortunate enough to have worked in the game for 20 years now and made a lot friends,” Zaidi said. “As tough as the last couple months have been — look, make no mistake, whether you’re a player getting released or DFA’d, or you’re a front office executive being let go, it’s tough, and you miss the game.
“Having people reach out, connect, see if I was interested in coming on board, that’s been awesome, and it reminds me what a great family and community we have in baseball. I have spoken with the Dodgers, I have spoken with some other teams. Still kind of figuring it out.”
Zaidi was also asked about what sort of role he’s looking for.
“It’s not important to me to get back into the GM role. If it happens, great. I know there’s so many different ways that anybody can help an organization,” Zaidi said. “I have friends who are GMs, and the chance to be a special assistant, to be an advisor to one of them, I think not only would it be great personally, but it would be nice professionally, too.”
Russell Martin is on his first Hall of Fame ballot, and the former Dodgers catcher through Wednesday night had not yet been voted for on any of the first 29 publicly-known ballots, per Ryan Thibodaux and the fine folks at the Hall of Fame tracker.
Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs profiled Martin’s Cooperstown candidacy, and noted how his strong framing makes him a strong candidate, but that’s if Martin gets the five percent of the vote required to remain on the ballot another year:
Though I’ve been anticipating the point when I could write Martin’s name on a Hall of Fame ballot since he entered his final season in the majors, I fear he’ll struggle to gain enough support merely to remain eligible. Nonetheless, I see him as a strong enough candidate to merit enshrinement. It won’t happen overnight; I just hope it doesn’t take 20 or 30 years.
Eno Sarris at The Athletic wrote about the vast majority of free agents beating their contract projections, in many cases handily, this offseason. He dug into the various possible reasons why.
The average projection between The Athletic, FanGraphs, ESPN, and MLB Trade Rumors had Blake Snell, for instance, signing for four years and just under $125 million, while he got five years and $182 million from the Dodgers. Or if you want to discount it to the competitive balance tax value, those projections were roughly correct as a collective on the average annual value, but even then Snell got one more year.