According to reports, the Los Angeles Dodgers have landed upon a new general manager. The Dodgers will name Farhan Zaidi as the next GM of the team, according to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.
Zaidi has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PHD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked for a Boston consulting group and the Sporting News website between MIT and Berkeley.
"I'm more worried about losing him to Apple or Google than I am to another team," A's GM Billy Beane told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle earlier in the year.
While at Berkeley, Zaidi read the book Moneyball and it changed the way he viewed the game of baseball. He saw a job posting for a position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his resume, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He worked as a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss, general manager Billy Beane called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with acquiring Cuban star Yoenis Cespedes, who was later lost to the Boston Red Sox through a trade.
For the 2013 season he was promoted by the Athletics to the Director of Baseball Operations and added Assistant General Manager to his title in 2014.