Giants hire Cubs AGM Scott Harris as their new general manager

The San Francisco Giants today announced that Scott Harris will be their new general manager, serving under team president Farhan Zaidi. Harris had been working in the Cubs front office for the past seven seasons, the last two as an assistant general manager.

Harris joined the Cubs in 2012 as the director of player development. Prior to that, the Northwestern and UCLA alumnus had worked for the Reds, Nationals and for Major League Baseball. Harris became the Cubs AGM in January of 2018.

In a press release by the Giants, Harris said:

I am so appreciative and honored to join the San Francisco Giants, a storied franchise with a loyal, passionate and deserving fan base. I’m humbled by the opportunity to help bring the next world championship to Giants fans and San Francisco, a city that has always held a special place in my heart. I’m excited to get to work with Farhan, our baseball operations staff and the rest of the Giants family.

To be clear, Harris will be the “Jed Hoyer” to Zaidi’s “Theo Epstein.” But that means that Harris and not Zaidi will represent the Giants at the upcoming GM meetings.

Zaidi took over the Giants front office last year as team president and declined to hire a GM at the time. But he had said that he would hire a GM when the time was right. Last month, Zaidi said:

I think it shows the evolution of front offices and how sophisticated and at times complex and involved running a baseball operations department is. I don’t necessarily view it as a fixed division of labor, where my job is going to be to handle these few things and the general manager is going to handle these others. It’s really about just sharing the load of managing the overall operation.

That’s the general opinion of how the Cubs front office works, so Harris should fit in well. While Zaidi will always have the final call, everyone is expected to be involved in the decision-making process and the final product on the field will be more of a collaboration than one man’s work.

This is another departure from the Cubs this winter, but I have no doubt that Epstein and Hoyer will have their choice of quality candidates should they chose to replace Harris in the front office.

We wish Harris and the Giants all the luck they can in San Francisco, except when they’re playing the Cubs.