Zaidi gets 3-year extension as Giants unify front office

SAN FRANCISCO -- On the same day the Giants introduced Bob Melvin as their new manager, they also announced a new deal for their head of baseball operations.

Chairman Greg Johnson said the Giants have agreed to a three-year extension with Farhan Zaidi, whose contract was due to expire after next season. Zaidi’s new deal will keep him in San Francisco through 2026, putting him on the same schedule as Melvin and preventing him from entering 2024 with lame-duck status.

“We have full confidence in Farhan,” Johnson said during Melvin’s introductory press conference at Oracle Park on Wednesday. “And for the stability of the organization, we’ve agreed in principle for a deal for Farhan through ’26.”

The Giants won a franchise-record 107 games under Zaidi in 2021, but they’re coming off two consecutive subpar seasons and have made the playoffs only once in his five seasons at the helm. Despite the middling results, Zaidi has continued to receive public support from ownership, with the two sides engaging in an “ongoing dialogue” about an extension “for a while.”

“It’s great to have that support,” Zaidi said. “I just want us to be able to move forward as an organization. We’ve got a big offseason. Just like we had expectations of being in the playoffs this past year, we have those next year. So to be able to focus on the task at hand and to feel like there’s, for everybody, a measure of stability with me and Bob, I think is a good thing for the organization.”

With Zaidi and Melvin now locked up for the next three years, the Giants will be able to present a united front, which they hope will help attract marquee free agents to San Francisco this offseason.

After going 79-83 in 2023, the Giants know they’ll need to make serious upgrades to their roster to contend in the National League West, which features two heavyweights in the Dodgers and Padres and figures to get even more competitive following the rise of the D-backs, who are in the midst of an improbable World Series run.

While they came up short in their pursuits of Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa last offseason, the Giants are again expected to pursue high-end talent in free agency this year, with Shohei Ohtani, Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jung Hoo Lee among their potential targets.

“I think for people to know that Bob and myself are both going to be here, and that there’s that measure of stability, I think that’s going to matter,” Zaidi said.

Zaidi acknowledged that he still has work to do to accomplish his goal of turning the Giants into perennial contenders, but he feels the organization has progressed in other key areas since he came on board in November of 2018.

“The last two years have been disappointing,” Zaidi said. “We want to be in the playoffs every year, and for us to not have been there the last couple of years has been rough. When I look at the broader arc, the last two seasons before I started in ‘19, we were 50 games under .500. Our farm system, I think, is much improved from that time, both in our internal evaluation and in industry rankings. I know for fans -- they don’t want to hear this and they shouldn’t want to hear this -- but we’re in a much better financial position to be aggressive in free agency. Obviously, executing is a big part of that. We were a lot more constrained when I first arrived in ‘18, ‘19. So there’s progress in all of those fronts.

“That doesn’t mean that we’re happy or even satisfied with how the last couple of seasons have gone. We spoke a lot right after the season about the disappointment and the need to make changes, having to be open to making changes to get to where we want to be. But I still see a lot of progress in the last five years, and we need to match that progress up with getting to the postseason and having sustainable success on the field.”