Dave Roberts and the Importance of Baseball’s Middle Managers

Farhan Zaidi, a thirty-nine-year-old who was born in Canada to Pakistani parents and grew up mostly in the Philippines, holds a Ph.D. in behavioral economics from the University of California at Berkeley. While he was working on that degree, he read Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball,” published in 2003, about the Oakland A’s and their maverick general manager, Billy Beane, and his use of statistical analysis. Zaidi decided to apply for a job with the franchise. He eventually became an assistant to Beane, who, in 2011, told me he was proud that a baseball team could attract that kind of brain power. Zaidi “could just as easily be creating his own startup or working for Google or working for Apple,” Beane said then. “Instead, he chooses to work here.” In 2014, Zaidi was hired away by the Los Angeles Dodgers—a franchise, like the A’s, known for its commitment to sophisticated analytics—who made him their G.M.

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