We’ve written a number of stories profiling potential candidates to replace Orioles EVP of Baseball Operations/General Manager Dan Duquette, including my own piece on Josh Byrnes and profiles from my colleagues on Amiel Sawdaye, Mike Elias, and Jason McLeod.

That quartet are names which would make logical sense to replace Duquette in the EVP / GM position.

But recently there have been rumblings that the franchise might actually hire TWO people to take the helm of the ship, a GM-type in Duquette’s role, and a President of Baseball Operations to oversee the whole operation.

The last time the Orioles had President of Baseball Ops was with Andy MacPhail. When his tenure ended, Duquette joined the organization as EVP.  The model with a Team President, and a EVP / GM has had some high-profile examples of recent success with the Cubs (Theo Epstein-Jed Hoyer) and Dodgers (Andrew Friedman-Farhan Zaidi), plus one potentially promising example with the White Sox (Ken Williams-Rick Hahn).

As the Orioles suddenly seem open to shaking things up dramatically, why not do this now? The more smart people you have in the room, the better. Right? Assuming everyone gets along, the answer certainly is “yes.” If the Orioles were to add a president, who would be a good fit?

Do I expect Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Farhan Zaidi to be a candidate for Team President of the Orioles?  No, I do not.

That said, if the goal is to build a Front Office with accomplished, intelligent professionals; he is worthy of consideration.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

FARHAN ZAIDI

If you were tasked with coming up with the most outside-the-box MLB front office executive possible, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate than Zaidi.

Zaidi is a Canadian-American of Pakistani descent who grew up in the Philippines. He is the sport’s lone Muslim general manager. He holds a BS of Economics from MIT and a doctorate of philosophy in economics from California-Berkley. He didn’t play baseball beyond high school, and his foray into MLB came in 2004 when he applied for and landed a $32,000/year job as an analyst under Billy Beane in Oakland.

Beane has referred to Zaidi as “absolutely brilliant,” and when Friedman called to ask Beane’s permission to interview him for the Dodgers’ GM job in 2014, Beane practically pleaded: “Come on Andrew. You can’t do this.”

Zaidi is, by his own admission, a huge nerd. But if we’re talking stereotypes, Zaidi doesn’t fit that one either. He is easy with a laugh, friendly and outgoing. He is notorious for his absolute dominance of the Dodger players’ fantasy football league – and gloats about it.

“Look, you don’t need a doctorate to pick up Alvin Kamara off waivers,” Zaidi told the Los Angeles Times last February.  “I think all of that stuff is totally moot. I’m just a good talent evaluator.”

His former colleague Alex Anthopoulos, who is now running the Braves, said Zaidi has the kind of personality that allows him to create relationships “with anyone, whether it’s the CEO of a company or it’s the janitor.”

So it’s well established that Zaidi is smart and personable and by all accounts an excellent analyst. He is a classic “Moneyball” disciple, adept at pouring over the data to look for areas that can be taken advantage of, areas that offer an overlooked return on investment.

But what about results?

Zaidi says he was “clueless” about scouting in his early days, and worked hard to get better. And he did. Beane credited Zaidi with the A’s signing of Yoenis Cespedes out of Cuba in 2012. That was a situation where there wasn’t much data to analyze, but Zaidi had hounded his scouts for information and upon entering a meeting to discuss Cespedes, he recited four years of information about the player off the top of his head.

It’s perhaps a little harder to evaluate Zaidi’s time with the Dodgers, given that it’s an organization that has invested so much money in building a front office stacked with smart people in both scouting and analysis. (This, frankly, is an underrated advantage of having deep pockets).

But there are some things the Dodgers have done that appear to have the fingerprints of the free-thinking Zaidi.

One major change is how the Dodgers handle their minor league system. When Friedman and Zaidi took over from Ned Colletti in 2014, they inherited a good team, but one that lacked depth and relied perhaps a bit too much on high-priced players like Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez and of course Clayton Kershaw. The new regime smoothed things out and began to elevate the importance of the 40-man roster over the 25-man roster. In other words, you have 40 guys, many of whom you can shuttle back and forth from the minors (assuming they have options). Why not stock the 40-man with MLB-ready players and use them?

The Dodgers have been particularly adept at using this philosophy with relief pitchers – who are cheap – using them while they are hot (Adam Liberatore, Louis Coleman, Josh Fields, Grant Dayton and Luis Avilan come to mind) then sending them back down to the minors when they cool off or wear out. This has also allowed the Dodgers to cover for injuries and limit the workload of their starters.

Zaidi questions everything, from traditional reliever roles to batting orders. The Dodgers used 155 different batting orders in 2018, not counting pitchers, while winning a division title. The Orioles used 152 while seeing most of their roster undergo a mid-season makeover.

He believes in both aggressively promoting prospects and in maintaining roster flexibility – he loves players that play multiple positions – and he doesn’t understand why any team has a personnel plan that goes beyond three years.

This is what Friedman says about Zaidi: “There are a lot of instances of him bringing something up that in the moment I think is crazy. And as it resonates more, I oftentimes will come around to the crazy thought.”

Do the Orioles need a little bit of crazy? Do they need to shed traditional thinking and bring in a free thinker like Zaidi? And would Zaidi’s methods even work as the boss, without a tempering voice like Friedman’s to answer to?

Those are all fair questions, as is the question of whether Zaidi would want to leave a good situation and travel across the country for a much less certain one.

Zaidi almost didn’t leave Oakland when the Dodgers came calling in 2014, mostly out of loyalty to Beane. In the end he changed his mind because he was intrigued by the challenge. He decided he needed to “make myself uncomfortable, professionally, to get better.”

Perhaps a new challenge awaits.

Bob Harkins
Bob Harkins

Orioles Analyst

Bob Harkins is a veteran journalist who has worked as a writer, editor and producer for numerous outlets, including 13 years at NBCSports.com. He is also the creator of the Razed Sports documentary podcast and the founder of Story Hangar, a network of documentary podcasters.

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