Buster Posey is leading a shift in the Giants approach to the MLB Draft, per Baseball America.
The differences between Farhan Zaidi and Buster Posey’s team building approaches as president of baseball operations have already been made apparent. However, a recent writeup by Carlos Collazo of Baseball America revealed another way that Posey’s approach will differ at the helm of the San Francisco Giants. Per Collazo, Posey is expected to rely much more heavily on the team’s scouts than Zaidi, who employed a more model-forward approach, in the 2025 MLB Draft.
“The buzz on the Giants is that their pick will be much more of a ‘scout-driven’ name than previous regimes, largely because of the presence of Buster Posey in the front office,” wrote Collazo in his latest mock draft.
Collazo’s report should come as no surprise, given Posey’s consistent emphasis on a less data-driven approach to team building. Zaidi, who climbed the front office ranks through analytics, had relied heavily on models for his decision making process. Over time, folks in and around the Giants brass seemed to grow frustrated with the way that approach seemed to paralyze the decision-making process.
It would be unfair to characterize Zaidi’s tenure as anti-scout, given how other analytics-forward executives of other teams significantly slashed scouting staffs in ways the Giants did not. However, there were murmurs throughout his tenure that scouts often felt unheard and uninvolved in discussions of the team’s top picks, which tended to be model-favored discount college players. Still, it’s unclear that Zaidi’s draft strategies were a major problem. While there were several significant misses the same apparatus also drafted Patrick Bailey, Casey Schmitt, and Kyle Harrison in the same year while adding Bryce Eldridge in 2023.
Nevertheless, the Giants are operating differently now. Posey hopes that will lead to even better results.