Farhan Zaidi Rumored To Be The Dodger’s Next GM

Just as I was about to write an article about whether the Dodgers were ever going to hire a new GM, word finally breaks about who that actually will be.

According to a tweet from Ken Gurnick, and other reports are citing that the Dodgers will hire former Oakland assistant GM Farhan Zaidi as their new general manager. Mark Saxon is also reporting that Josh Byrnes will be brought in as well, although we still don’t know in what capacity.

Picture Credit:TomahawkTake

We already knew the Dodgers were talking to Byrnes, but the rumors about Zaidi just surfaced this week. I don’t know anything about Zaidi myself, so I’ll just tell you what I’m reading about him.

I know he was the assistant GM under Billy Beane for ten years, and is highly respected as one of the brightest Baseball minds. They say the same thing about newly hired Andrew Friedman as well. That’s good stuff right? Zaidi is 37 years old, and a Muslim Canadian that grew up in the Philippines.

Here is another number cruncher joining the Dodger’s front office. Zaidi went to MIT and has a Doctorate in behavioral economics from Cal Berkeley. How that could help him in Baseball I have no idea. I guess it will help him analyze the advanced numbers. I’m still on the fence about all of these number crunchers holding high ranking positions. But Zaidi seems like a very smart guy. Zaidi is known for traditional scouting techniques, and for maximizing value through platoons. Joy. You guys know how much I hate platoons.

Putting my hatred for platoons aside, I’m just glad the Dodgers finally named someone as GM. Is it just me? Or did it seem like time was ticking here. The World Series ended like a week ago.

The Dodgers are expected to make an announcement sometime next week. We’ll have much more on this soon.