Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The search for that other crucial franchise piece is underway, too.
Scott Harris, the assistant general manager of the Cubs, emerged as the first known candidate to become the Giants’ new GM, The Athletic reported Wednesday.
Farhan Zaidi said the GM and manager hunts would be conducted concurrently, the Giants president of baseball operations looking for two personalities who would fit each other and fit within the structure of the Giants’ hierarchy. There have been plenty of public developments for Bruce Bochy’s successor, which is believed to be down to Gabe Kapler, Joe Espada and Pedro Grifol. Bobby Evans, fired in September 2018, has not had an heir.
Harris is standing alone for now, the report listing him as a candidate but little more known. Harris, a rising star with the Cubs, would seem the type for Zaidi to home in on.
Harris has been with the Cubs since 2012 — when he was 25 — and hired to be the director of baseball operations under Theo Epstein. The Redwood City native had worked in Bud Selig’s MLB office as coordinator of minor league operations since 2010.
The 2009 graduate of UCLA rose with Chicago, getting promoted before the 2018 season as a sort of wunderkind in a baseball landscape very much amenable to youthful minds.
Zaidi does not envision his GM being the traditional transaction-maker; he more wants another brain with a standout skill to fit within the group structure.
Zaidi does not want to limit himself as to what that standout skill could be.
“I think by not defining it, specifically, it opens up the candidate pool,” Zaidi said at his end-of-season news conference. “Whether it’s somebody that has experience and expertise in scouting or player development or administration, whatever their strengths are. Hopefully we can complement each other and work well in increasing our overall kind of management bandwidth of the operation.”
And as Zaidi is going through both of these searches, he’s considering who will get along with whom well.
“The notion of how those two can and will work together will be a factor,” Zaidi said. “And it’s just the logistical reality of having these two processes going on concurrently is that … you want to know how the GM is going to work with the manager, but you also want to know how the manager is going to work with the GM. So a little bit of a chicken and egg, but we will very much have it in mind that those two are going to have a close relationship.”