How a life in baseball landed Minasian as Giants general manager originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — When you’re the general manager of a team on the West Coast, text messages from rival executives and agents arrive before sunrise, but it’s no problem for Zack Minasian.
The new No. 2 in the Giants’ revamped front office was promoted about six months after the birth of his first child, which means he often has a good reason to already be awake at 5 a.m. Minasian has always been an early riser, and that led him to one of his first experiences relating to his new boss.
On draft day in 2008, the then 25-year-old was one of the first two Milwaukee Brewers employees to arrive at their draft room. The other was Jack Zduriencik, the Brewers’ director of amateur scouting.
“I remember he turned to me and said, ‘If we were going number one, we’d take Buster Posey,'” Minasian recalled on Tuesday’s “Giants Talk.”
The Brewers had the 16th pick and no hope of selecting the Florida State catcher. The Giants took him fifth, a decision that changed their franchise on the field, and now potentially off the field as well. One of Posey’s first moves as president of baseball operations was to hire Minasianwhich was a surprise choice not only for the outsiders, but also for both men.
Posey admitted after the announcement that he didn’t expect Minasian to reach the top of his search process. Minasian listened to Posey introduce himself as the new head of baseball operations and thought he might be able to provide everything Posey was looking for in a partner, but those dreams began to slip away a few days after that press conference initial.
The two had some early conversations about recruiting, and Minasian considered himself fortunate that Posey immediately felt comfortable with him continuing to lead the organization’s pro scouting efforts. But one Saturday morning in October, Posey called and asked if Minasian would be interested in interviewing for the vacant general manager position.
On the first day of November, Minasian was announced as the 11th general manager in San Francisco Giants history. A few days earlier, Posey had reached out in a meeting and offered the position. Minasian shook him, then told his new boss he needed to give him a hug, too.
That moment was the culmination of a lifetime spent working for that handshake. Posey wanted someone with scout trainingsomeone who would be comfortable with every person in the clubhouse, from the team’s biggest stars to the hard-working young employees who unload their bags in the middle of the night.
“I think someone who we can relate to, someone who can not only empower the players or the agents that they may come in contact with, but who can also relate to the guys or girls in our “coaching team, our medical team, our strength team,” Posey said at the start of his research. “Because all these people mean so much to us being able to achieve our ultimate goal.”
No one knows this better than Minasian. Ever since he was old enough to understand what baseball was, he was one of those people.
Minasian grew up in clubhouses thanks to his father, Zack, who was clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers for more than two decades. The four Minasian boys initially helped the visiting team, watching in awe as players like George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr. and Robin Yount entered the room each time a new opponent arrived, but they were not not there just to slide the bubble. stories about chewing gum and banking that would make their classmates jealous.
Minasian remembers unpacking truckloads of equipment at four in the morning, then heading to class at the high school a few hours later. After one brother, Perry, became general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, another, Rudy, told USA Today that the Minasians “washed a lot of jocks and scrubbed a lot of toilets so that one of them gets us a job as general manager.” It was hard work, but it put them on the right track. Two of the brothers are now MLB general managers and a third works for the Atlanta Braves.
“It was understood that you could come to this clubhouse, but you had to work,” Minasian said of his childhood. “I probably broke a lot of child labor laws, but I worked there and me and my brothers loved every minute of it.”
Well, not every minute. When their father transferred to the local club, the Minasians were able to celebrate their victories with the Rangers players, coaches and club staff, but those long seasons taught the youngest of the four a lesson that has stuck with him. There is only silence in the minutes following a defeat.
“I don’t know if I became addicted to winning as much as I hated losing,” Minasian said.
Those seasons taught lessons Minasian would bring to Milwaukee, where he spent 14 years and became baseball’s youngest professional scouting director when he was just 27 years old. He was instrumental in helping the Brewers acquire CC Sabathia and Josh Hader, and in 2010 he made a deal with Perry, then working for the Toronto Blue Jays, which had its roots in the MLB Draft from 2008.
With Posey long gone, the Brewers selected infielder Brett Lawrie, who was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays two years later in exchange for right-hander Shaun Marcum. Giants fans may be familiar with the pitcher who served up Brandon Crawford’s first career home run a year after that trade, but in Milwaukee, Marcum was a reliable rotation piece, helping the Brewers to a few wins short of a pennant.
Minasian was hired by Farhan Zaidi in 2019, a crucial step in his career, but bittersweet for a longtime mentor. His grandfather and father were close to former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who became young Zack’s godfather.
“When I was hired here, he insulted me and called me Benedict Arnold,” Minasian said, smiling.
Three years later, Minasian was promoted to vice president of pro scouting, and it took only two years after that move for Posey to focus on him as a partner during a crucial time for the organization. It’s a role Minasian has prepared for throughout his career, as he sees his background in professional scouting as occasionally requiring him to serve as general manager for 29 other teams.
But in reality, it’s a role Minasian has been preparing for since he was five years old and first entered the clubhouse.
“It’s funny, people talk about rising from the bottom. I never considered working at this club to be the bottom,” he said. “It was a privilege. We had a lot of great players, coaches, management (and) front office people who took care of me and my brothers. My dad invested in us. And I’m here to honor them all. “.
