And now for something completely different in the venerable history of a storied rivalry: Andrew Friedman matches wits with Buster Posey.

Six years ago, the San Francisco Giants recruited Friedman’s Dodgers lieutenant Farhan Zaidi with much fanfare to return the Giants to glory. After one season with a winning record and no postseason series victories, the Giants fired Zaidi as their president of baseball operations on Monday.

His replacement: Posey, the franchise icon, the only Giant to win a most valuable player award in the past two decades, the catcher when the Giants won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

“We believe it is time for new leadership to take our team to the next level so we can consistently compete for championships,” Giants chairman Greg Johnson said in a statement.

In 2022, the year after he retired as a player, Posey purchased an ownership stake in the team and joined the board of directors. Posey will surround himself with experienced advisors – one of whom, manager Bob Melvin, will keep his job even though Zaidi has lost his.

In one crucial way, Posey was already at work. Under Zaidi, the Giants had struck out on big-dollar pitches against Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. When the Giants’ ownership group recently pushed to retain third baseman Matt Chapman, the Athletic reported that the man who essentially closed the $151 million deal was Posey, not Zaidi.

The inability to land a superstar — and in fairness, Zaidi did bring in Carlos Correa before the Giants canceled the deal due to concerns raised by a physical exam — negated one of Zaidi’s strengths.

Farhan Zaidi, a former Dodgers executive, has parted ways with the Giants.

(Eric Risberg/Associated Press)

With the Dodgers, Friedman and Zaidi excelled at finding talent on the fringe: for example, signing Max Muncy as a minor league free agent and acquiring utility man Chris Taylor in a minor league trade. Even if the supporting players don’t develop into stars — and Muncy and Taylor do — they provide the depth every successful team needs.

Without Posey in the lineup, the Giants were far too dependent on first baseman-outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr., among others. and outfielder Mike Yastrzemski. And once prized free agents signed elsewhere, the Giants too often filled out their roster with more free agents better suited for deep roles than lead roles: The 2023 collection included outfielders Michael Conforto and Mitch Haniger, and pitchers Sean Manaea , Taylor Rogers. and Ross Stripling.

The design offered no help. In Zaidi’s six drafts, no player has produced even a 3.0 career WAR. Neither has had one of the Giants’ first-round picks since 2011. The Giants’ first-round picks that preceded their run of three championships in five years included Posey (2008) and pitchers Madison Bumgarner (2007), Tim Lincecum (2006) and Matt Cain (2002).

Chapman ranked fifth in WAR among NL players this season, according to Fangraphs, and Logan Webb ranked fifth among NL pitchers. The Giants didn’t have another player in the top 30 for position players, or in the top 30 for pitchers.

Maybe Posey can convince out-of-contract Blake Snell to stay in San Francisco and give the Giants two aces on top of their rotation. But the NL West is insanely good now: the Dodgers won 98 games, the San Diego Padres 93. The Arizona Diamondbacks, who stormed into the World Series last year with an 84-win team, won 89 games this year.

A quick tidbit: Posey will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2027. The only player inducted into the Hall who later became general manager: Ted Simmons, who managed the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1992 and 1993. He resigned midway through the 1993 season dismissal. after a heart attack.

In his first and only full season in charge of the Pirates’ baseball operations, Simmons led his team to a division championship. Simmons, of course, had Barry Bonds on his roster. Posey needs to find his Posey.