Farhan Zaidi's next venture may come as a surprise to SF Giants fans

Former SF Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi will forever be polarizing amongst Giants fans and his latest venture may come as a surprise as he is reportedly set to begin an advisory role with the Los Angeles Lakers.

With the Lakers being sold from the Buss family to Mark Walter, who is the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Zaidi and Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman are helping with that transition by lending their expertise.

Former SF Giants POBO Farhan Zaidi to serve in an advisor role with Los Angeles Lakers

This is an interesting move for Zaidi who rejoined the Dodgers organization as a special adviser last year after being let go by the Giants following the 2024 season. We will see how involved he is with the Lakers organization and front office as it is not readily clear exactly what he will be doing on a day-to-day basis, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Any time that an executive in one sport transitions into another spot it always makes for something to watch. We saw Paul DePodesta, one of the stars of the book Moneyball who helped revolutionize the way front offices think about and approach the game of baseball, make the transition from MLB to the NFL with the Cleveland Browns where things did not go great.

Now, DePodesta is headed back to baseball as he was hired by the Colorado Rockies as their president of baseball operations. We will have to see if he is able to transition back into baseball since it has changed quite a bit since his heyday with the Oakland A's.

It does not seem like Zaidi is going to be in charge of roster construction for the Lakers going forward, but it will still be an interesting experiment to see if Zaidi does have success in whatever his role ultimately looks like with the Lakers.

Buster Posey has certainly run the Giants a bit differently after taking over for Zaidi, but as of late he has operated a little more like Zaidi with some of the team's minor additions this offseason like Justin Dean and Joey Wiemer.

We know Zaidi was a big believer in improving at the margins, but his reluctance to hand out big contracts is likely what led to the end of his time with the Giants.

We will see what Zaidi's time with the Lakers ends up looking like, but Giants fans will certainly not be cheering him on as he has gone from working for the archrival of the Giants to now working for arguably the biggest rival of the Golden State Warriors.