How Farhan Zaidi’s approach to building SF Giants has keyed success for Yastrzemski, Wade and more

About halfway through a 2019 season in which the Giants used a franchise-record 64 players, fans slowly began to understand Farhan Zaidi’s approach to building a roster.

At the time, the first-year president of baseball operations wasn’t yet a popular figure in San Francisco as he hadn’t yet been forgiven for handing outgoing manager Bruce Bochy an Opening Day roster that required him to start Connor Joe and Michael Reed in the team’s outfield. But as the Giants worked their way through a 19-6 July, Joe and Reed were long gone while Mike Yastrzemski, Alex Dickerson and Kevin Pillar used extended opportunities to become mainstays in a revamped outfield.

Through a roster-building strategy that enabled the Giants to take chances on overlooked players and others who simply needed major league playing time to prove themselves, an organization that had long struggled to develop homegrown talent in the outfield suddenly had building blocks for the future.

Yastrzemski, who spent six seasons in the Baltimore Orioles’ farm system without playing a major league game, went from an unknown prospect to an overnight star in San Francisco, where he tied Pillar with a team-leading 21 home runs. His emergence coupled with a breakout season for Dickerson gave Zaidi credibility with a skeptical fan base that was unsure whether a former Dodgers executive could bring the Giants back to relevance in the National League West.

Two years later, Zaidi’s approval among Giants fans is at an all-time high. Yastrzemski and Dickerson are now just two of the many successful, yet formerly unheralded players the Giants’ top baseball executive has acquired en route to assembling a club that sits 33 games above .500 and 5.0 games ahead of the Dodgers in the National League West.

There’s Donovan Solano, the journeyman infielder who won a Silver Slugger Award at second base in 2020. There’s Darin Ruf, who spent three seasons in the Korean Baseball Organization before emerging as a key power threat for the Giants over the last two seasons. There’s Kevin Gausman, who was exactly league average for the first seven seasons of his career before becoming the ace of San Francisco’s staff in 2020.

The list of valued contributors acquired by Zaidi who have fortified a resurgent core led by Buster Posey, Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford goes on, but it’s possible no player aside from Yastrzemski better exemplifies Zaidi’s gift for identifying talent than LaMonte Wade Jr.

With his 15th home run of the season on Thursday in a 7-0 win over the Rockies, Wade has now homered once for ever 13.2 at-bats this season. A player who never hit more than 11 home runs in a season during his minor league career with the Twins has become one of the Giants’ most reliable power threats, which is exactly what Zaidi and manager Gabe Kapler hoped for when San Francisco sent reliever Shaun Anderson to Minnesota in the trade for Wade back in February.

“You never know how a guy is going to evolve and mature in areas where we might be able to help him in, but it’s really encouraging to see what he’s doing and we think he’s just kind of getting going in his career,” Giants hitting coach Donnie Ecker said last week.

The Giants pursued Wade via a trade because he had always posted high on-base percentages in the minor leagues and in a small 113-plate appearance sample size with the Twins, he had demonstrated excellent plate discipline. Having players who control the strike zone, work deep counts and avoid chasing pitches is a top priority for Zaidi and the Giants, who rank fifth in the majors with a 9.9% walk rate.

In Wade, the Giants saw a player with the foundational skills to excel in the majors, but someone who also hadn’t come close to reaching his full potential. Since being recalled from Triple-A Sacramento on May 28, he’s given the Giants every reason to believe he can be a core player well into the future as he’s played strong defense at both corner outfield positions and first base while also posting an .883 OPS.

When Wade started Thursday’s game as the Giants’ leadoff hitter, he did so against a Rockies team that’s fairly excited about the production its own leadoff man has provided of late. Connor Joe, yes, the same Joe who only had 15 at-bats with the Giants before being cut in 2019, went 1-for-3 with a walk for the Rockies at the top of the order and is now batting .291 with an .836 OPS this season.

Joe is on the long list of players Zaidi tried out in San Francisco who didn’t end up becoming a regular, but by continuing to find opportunities for others who just needed one big break, Zaidi has helped the Giants land Yastrzemski, Wade and many others.

A roster-building strategy that took fans a long time to get used to has rapidly been embraced, which tends to happen when a team piles up wins in the way the Giants have this season.