Long Shots: The Improbable Paths of Zaidi, Harris and Kapler to the Major Leagues
By: San Francisco Giants
Tags: Farhan Zaidi, MLB, Scott Harris, Gabe Kapler, Sfgiants

Part 1

Nearly three months after 32-year-old Scott Harris started his new job as the Giants’ general manager, a stack of unopened boxes from his old office at the Chicago Cubs still loomed in a corner. His desk, dominated by two huge computer screens, was still devoid of a single personal item. Three walls were bare, with the fourth providing the room’s only color –about a hundred players’ names in red block-lettering on an enormous white board. The grid of names, in neat rows organized by position, allowed Harris to see in one glance every current free agent on the market.

Farhan Zaidi’s office next door was worse, though he’d been there more than a year. All four walls were blank, and if not for a recent installation of new carpet, courtesy of Zaidi’s architect/designer wife, the room bore more resemblance to a storage closet than the command post of the Giants’ president of baseball operations.

Three floors down, in a room off the clubhouse, new manager Gabe Kapler had made more progress than his two colleagues: His office had a few books.

If eyes are the window to the soul, offices are a window to the driven mind.

When Zaidi hired Harris and Kapler in November 2019, he knew he was getting the workplace versions of gym rats — those full-immersion, nowhere-I’d-rather-be workers who want the keys to the building so they can arrive early and leave late. Much like himself (though the birth of his first child in July 2019 has him logging more hours at home).

On paper, the men seem quite different. Two didn’t play baseball beyond childhood while the third built his life around it. One has a Ph.D., another an MBA while the third barely finished a year of community college. They are a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian. They are the sons of bankers, doctors and left-wing hippies. They were raised in places as exotic as the Philippines and as suburban as Redwood City and Reseda.

Yet they were shaped by the same two profound forces: a consuming passion for baseball, and the utter improbability of having a career in it.

Each man was a total longshot.

Part 2

In Evans Hall on the UC-Berkeley campus in 2004, 27-year-old Farhan Zaidi was three years into his Ph.D. program in behavioral economics. He didn’t know how or where he would use his degree. Not Wall Street and Silicon Valley, he knew that much. He was studying economics for the intellectual pleasure of it. He had enjoyed it as an undergrad at MIT and figured it would be fun to immerse himself. For Zaidi, a light-hearted brainiac with a self-deprecating sense of humor and an easy laugh, fun always had to be part of the equation.

So when he saw a listing one day on MLB’s job board for baseball operations assistant at the Oakland A’s, he applied. In recent months, he had sent resumes the Dodgers, the Blue Jays and the A’s, with no response. He knew they were shots in the dark. He was closing in on 30 with no experience in baseball beyond high school, and that was in Manila, where Zaidi — Pakistani by heritage and Canadian by birth — grew up from the age of three.

Despite his father’s nudges toward cricket, Zaidi can’t remember a time when he wasn’t crazy for baseball. As a kid, his favorite book was the 1986 edition of “Bill James Baseball Abstract,” which arrived one day at the tiny American bookstore that young Farhan scoured for baseball books. He persuaded his parents to subscribe to USA Today (delivered to the Philippines on a three-day delay) so he and his brother could follow the box scores. Later, when an Asian cable channel began carrying a few MLB games a week, the family signed up for that subscription, too. While traveling in the U.S. with his parents at the age of ten, he attended his first major league game — Giants versus Astros at Candlestick Park — and it was a doozy. Will Clark and Candy Maldonado hit back-to-back home runs in the ninth for a 6–5 Giants win.

If Zaidi ever had a thought back then about making a living in baseball, it was a fleeting one. How could someone like him break in? As the years went by, and he progressed from valedictorian at his high school to a star at both MIT and Berkeley, he seemed destined for academia, perhaps proving some complex theorem or pioneering a new approach to studying human behavior. But his love for baseball and sports in general found its way into his studies. His fascination with baseball, and sports in general, would have to be expressed in other ways, like using baseball card collectors as the centerpiece of his graduate thesis on irrational decision-making.

Then in 2003, Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball turned analytics into baseball’s newest competitive edge. Suddenly Zaidi saw a crack of light in the wall between him and Major League Baseball. He began to regularly check MLB’s job listings, and one day there it was, the $30,000-a-year position that would change his life. Invited for an interview, Zaidi spent two weeks happily preparing day and night. He arrived at the Oakland Coliseum — 30 minutes early — with a thick folder of his own scouting reports and analytic projections for both team and individual performances for the upcoming 2005 season. He got the job.

A decade later, he had become one of the most sought-after executives in baseball. When the Dodgers lured him from the A’s to be their new general manager, a Los Angeles sportswriter bemoaned the hiring of “all these geeks.’’ After his introductory press conference, Zaidi sought out the writer. He shook the man’s hand and said with a big smile, “I brought my screwdriver, in case you need help fixing your laptop.’’ The writer laughed. Mission accomplished.

Part 3

Scott Harris dropped baseball in middle school. Except for the occasional pick-up game, he never played again. Though better suited for lacrosse and soccer, Harris loved everything about baseball. He spent many hours with his brother Chris and his baseball-crazy dad discussing pitching choices, situational hitting, lineup strategies and also the players’ personalities, strengths and weaknesses. As kids in Redwood City, Scott and Chris collected baseball cards in three-ring binders, and during five-hour drives to Lake Tahoe (before smart phones and tablets) they’d sit in the back seat and alternate saying the name of a player until one of them was stumped or they had arrived at lake.

Despite living in the Bay Area, Harris was a diehard Cubs (and Bears) fan, following in the footsteps of his father, a Chicago native. Brother Chris was a Giants (and Niners) fan, just like his mother, a San Francisco native whose roots go back to before the 1906 earthquake. The family went to Giants games at Candlestick then Oracle (nee Pac Bell and AT&T), rarely missing a Giants-Cubs match-up, with Harris in blue and his brother in orange.

After graduating from Menlo School in Atherton, Harris majored in economics at UCLA and played club lacrosse. His parents — his father is a urologist and mother an OB-GYN — had always encouraged him and his siblings to choose a career that made them happy, which was the impetus for the surprising decision Harris made during his junior year.

“I was floating along on a finance track,’’ he said, “and I realized it wasn’t for me. It forced me to dig deep on what job I’d want to go to every morning and really enjoy. And baseball was always in the back of my mind.’’

He hadn’t coached. He been inside either a clubhouse or a front office. “I didn’t know a single person in the game,’’ he said. “And when I say I didn’t know a single person, I didn’t know a single person.’’

Between classes, he looked up the names and addresses of every president and general manager of every Major League organization, and he began writing letters to each one. Most didn’t respond (including his future Cubs boss, Theo Epstein). But as it happened, Harris’s grandmother knew Al Rosen, the American League MVP and four-time All-Star for the Cleveland Indians in the 1940s and ’50s, and later a front office executive, including the job of Giants general manager in the late 1980s and early ’90s. The college kid and the old third baseman would meet for lunch, where Harris would soak up all of Rosen’s stories and advice. Soon he landed his first baseball gig: unpaid summer intern with the Washington Nationals. Baseball front offices were changing, and people like Harris with analytical minds were trickling in. “But it was still just a pipe dream,’’ he said.

He returned to UCLA in the fall, earned his economics degree in spring and secured a paid internship with the Cincinnati Reds, earning the princely sum of $500 a month. The team was understaffed, so Harris found himself operating above his pay grade, doing whatever needed doing. He proved to be a quick study and indefatigable worker, and was soon hired by the baseball commissioner’s office in New York.

But a year in, after he had started an MBA program at Columbia, Cubs executive Theo Epstein called out of the blue and hired the 25-year-old as director of baseball operations. Harris withdrew from Columbia and moved to Chicago. His work ethic, already well known, became the stuff of legend. Determined to continue his MBA studies at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Harris had to figure out how to attend class in Chicago while at springing training in Arizona during February and March. He loaded up on Saturday classes. Every Friday night, he’d catch a redeye from Phoenix to Chicago, arrive early Saturday morning, get a few hours’ sleep, go to classes all day, take another redeye that night, and arrive back in Arizona in the wee hours of Sunday morning, ready to dive back into work. “I’d look at Scott and think, how the hell are you able to that?’’ his brother marveled. (Harris graduated from Kellogg with an MBA in 2015.)

Harris worked happily at the Cubs for seven years, during which the franchise won its first World Series Championship in 108 years. “I stood there thinking, ‘How did I get here?’ ’’ Harris said. When he received his championship ring, he didn’t put it on. Instead, he kept it in the box and gave it to his father.

In the autumn of 2019 Harris received another fateful call out of the blue, this time by Farhan Zaidi of the Giants. The two men didn’t know each other except by reputation. Zaidi was looking for whip-smart general manager who had experience turning a losing team into a champion. “What made Scott such a great fit was for us,’’ Zaidi said, “was the fact that he saw this entire cycle take place in Chicago.’’

Harris was by then the Cubs’ assistant general manager and loved the job. But the challenge of developing young players into a thriving team, the prospect of returning home to the Bay Area, and the greater responsibility and influence he’d have within the organization, were too enticing to pass up.

At a press conference at Oracle Park on November 11, with his parents and brother in the audience, Harris was introduced by Zaidi as the San Francisco Giants 10th general manager.

Part 4

Last year, Baseball America tracked every draft pick between 1981 and 2010 to see how many reached the major leagues. For first-rounders, 73 percent made it. For second-rounders, 51 percent; and third-rounders, 40 percent. By the 11th round, barely 10 percent reached the majors.

Imagine the odds for someone drafted in the 57th round.

Gabe Kapler was the 1,487th player picked in 1995.* [Note: The player taken 1,486th was a shortstop out of Sarasota name Paul Turco Jr. who never reached the big leagues but, like his father, Paul Turco Sr., became a scout for the Giants and now is the proud owner of three World Series rings.]

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Just two years earlier, legendary Cal State-Fullerton coach Augie Garrido, fresh off yet another College World Series appearance, had given Kapler a near-full-ride scholarship. The 17-year-old, immature and in love, spent most nights of his first semester partying or driving back and forth to Reseda to visit his high school sweetheart. He missed classes and practices, underperformed on the field and before Christmas break lost his scholarship. Deflated and embarrassed, he moved back in with his parents and, while his Cal State-Fullerton teammates improved their baseball skills, Kapler spent the spring delivering pizzas.

But the failure had flipped a switch. He began to transform himself inside and out. He quit junk food and worked out like a mad man. In late summer of 1994, he enrolled at Moorpark Community College, a 40-minute drive from Reseda, where he earned a spot on the baseball team. He hit .337 with seven home runs and 52 RBIs. The stats lifted his hopes for the upcoming draft — only to find himself among the last players picked.

“I was an afterthought,’’ Kapler said later. “I had no chance to reach the big leagues.’’

But he didn’t actually believe that. He was realistic enough to recognize he wasn’t as gifted as a lot of his fellow draftees in the Detroit farm system. He also knew he had strengths most of them didn’t have, namely an extraordinary capacity for hard work, discipline and learning. Nobody was going to out-hustle or out-prepare him. By 1998 he was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year and the top prospect in the Tigers organization. By 1999, he made the Opening Day roster at age 23, playing centerfield. He would never be a star, but he crafted a career that lasted 12 years in the majors, playing for six different teams, plus another in Japan. He even won a World Series Championship, with the Red Sox in 2004.

It was there, in Boston, that he first began thinking of managing.

By then Kapler was the quintessential journeyman: platoon outfielder, pinch-hitter, pinch runner and a substitute on defense. To survive on the roster, he had to be ready for any situation, which meant anticipating when manager Terry Francona might want to use him. He had to watch the game more closely. He began to notice things he hadn’t noticed before and to strategize one or two innings ahead. “That was super-enticing to me,’’ Kapler said. He got in the habit of thinking along with bench coach Brad Mills, who could see Kapler was bright and understood the game in ways a lot of players never would. But Mills didn’t envision him as a manager. Outfielders rarely become managers.

“But that’s not a knock on him. It’s a knock on me for not seeing it,’’ said Mills, now the bench coach for the Cleveland Indians. Outfielders rarely become managers.

The Red Sox gave Kapler an opportunity in 2007 to manage their Low-A minor league team in Greenville, South Carolina. He loved it but missed the competition of playing. So he played again in 2008 and 2009 before working as analyst for FoxSports1. From there, he worked as the Dodgers’ director of player development for three years then managed the Phillies for two seasons. Along the way he married and raised two boys (one now in college, the other in high school).

When he was let go by the Phillies at the end of 2019 and Zaidi hired him to manage the Giants, he understood the skepticism of fans and media.

He would have to prove himself. It was familiar territory.

Part 5

Zaidi and Kapler already knew each other well from their time together at the Dodgers. They are comfortable dissecting one another’s points of view, calling each other out on blind spots and biases, and cutting right to the heart of a topic with blunt honesty.

Harris was the outsider. He knew Kapler a little from interviewing him for the Cubs’ managerial position that David Ross ultimately landed. He knew Zaidi only by reputation. If he had any slight reservation about taking the job, it was not having certainty about how well the three of them would blend. “I know from experience that in this game you have to work very closely with these people every day of the year for 16, 17 hours a day. You really have to trust that you can bring the best out of them and they bring the best out of you,’’ Harris said. “And Farhan and Kap are who I hoped they would be.’’

One of the first orders of business for the new Giants brain trust was hiring a coaching staff, a process that turned into a de facto team-building exercise. The many, many hours they spent together allowed them to observe each other’s personalities, work rhythms and leadership styles. Zaidi loved a question Harris often asked candidates who seemed a bit too scripted: “What will you suck at the first year of coaching?’’ The answers revealed candidates’ ability to be honest about themselves, shedding light on character, self-confidence and willingness to grow. The ways the three men complemented each other began to become clearer.

One of Zaidi’s strengths is the ability to see all parts of the organization — from low A to the big leagues, from draft prospects to ownership — as a single entity, a living organism that demands constant adjustments. He has a gift for finding the unrecognized advantage. He won his fantasy football league three years in a row at the Dodgers by figuring out that if he drafted two position players in place of a kicker and a defense, as was convention, he could score more points. When his league made a kicker and a defense mandatory in the draft, Zaidi drafted accordingly — then dropped the kicker and defense and picked up two position players.

Harris is the calm, measured thinker who digs into data, scouting reports, transactions, players’ histories and personalities like a forensic scientist, searching at every level for the competitive edge. He is a counterbalance to Zaidi’s self-acknowledged tendency to “skew to the bottom line when evaluating players.’’ Both Harris and Kapler, with their player development backgrounds, are more likely to recognize the raw ingredients in a struggling player and find ways “to turn him into a performance success story,’’ as Zaidi puts it.

“What is energizing for me and for the rest of the staff,’’ he said, “is that both of those guys are very glass-half-full in evaluating players. And it’s so easy to be the other way. It’s so easy to look at a player and pick them apart and say what they can’t do. You can always find a reason not to acquire a guy. Scott and Gabe are more open-minded and creative, and that’s hugely valuable right now in closing the gap on some of the teams ahead of us.’’

Among the three, Kapler, of course, is the only one who understands what it’s like to be a player. He knows the impact of front-office decisions not only on the individual, but the potential ripple effect in the clubhouse and on the field. He brings the intricacies of human nature to the sometimes sterile decision-making of a front office. He believes strongly that the culture of the clubhouse affects performance on the field. His hands-on experience in developing young players will be a key to carrying the Giants back into contention as it did in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

Their tenures at different organizations also complement one another. With almost any player they’re interested in acquiring, one of the three has a personal connection. So evaluating a player usually looks like this: Either Zaidi, Harris or Kapler is giving first-hand information about the guy while the other two pepper him with questions about how the player is as a teammate, how strong his commitment is to winning, and how he makes his teammates better. Then together they talk through different negotiating strategies, potential effects of the decision and whether they’ve explored all the other options.

“What Farhan wants most is a partnership,’’ Kapler said. “He likes the back and forth. I think he gets excited and inspired by that kind of conversation. He wants someone to challenge him.’’

Though Harris has a quieter presence than his two partners, he is no less forthcoming. “When we disagree, we settle it with very direct and passionate debate,’’ Harris said. “That’s the only way I really know how to do it. And it seems, based on Farhan’s and Kap’s backgrounds, that’s the way they grew up in the game, too.’’

As winter turned toward spring, three men continued to grow closer. Their similarities rose closer to the surface. All are natural collaborators and information hounds. (“The only useless information is false information,’’ Kapler likes to say.) They pay little attention to convention. They revel in every aspect of competition, from contending for a championship to nabbing a minor-league pitching coach from a rival team. They over-prepare. They are personable, disciplined and have a quietly ferocious belief in themselves. Each believes deep down they can always find a way to be better than they are right now. All three prefer to compete as a team instead of individually because they’re smarter together and because it makes the highs even more intoxicating and the lows less lonely. They are thinkers and also grinders, as energized about addressing the smallest detail as exploring the biggest idea.

They are in constant communication. They shoot messages to each other in a never-ending text thread, absorbed in work that grips them like an exhilarating unsolved puzzle. Through it all, none of them ever seems to take for granted the quirks of fate that opened their unlikely path to Major League Baseball.

Zaidi still has the index card on which he scribbled Billy Beane’s cell number when the Oakland A’s general manager offered him that first job. Zaidi pinned to his office bulletin boards at both the A’s and the Dodgers. “I can’t tell you how many times I like looked up at the card and had to slap myself and say, ‘Hey, no matter what you’re getting worked up about, you got an amazing opportunity to work in baseball and you can’t ever forget how fortunate you are and how fun this job is.’’’

But if you go into Zaidi’s office at the Giants you won’t see the index card posted anywhere.

He hasn’t gotten around to putting up a bulletin board.