SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the biggest offseasons in Giants history will begin with a surprising first task: The Giants have to replace their general manager.
Scott Harris will take over as president of baseball operations for the Detroit Tigers, a source confirmed to NBC Sports Bay Area. The news was reported first by ESPN's Jeff Passan on Monday afternoon, and the Tigers made the move officially shortly after.
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For Harris, a Bay Area native who came home to help run the Giants, this is a notable promotion. He now will get to run his own baseball operations department, taking a job that is equivalent to the role Farhan Zaidi has in San Francisco.
The loss is a big one for the Giants, who hired Harris from the Chicago Cubs after the 2019 season, a few days before they announced Gabe Kapler as their new manager. Zaidi, Harris and Kapler were a close-knit trio and helped build a team that won 107 games in 2021 but has taken a huge step back this season.
The down year had done nothing to hurt Harris' reputation in the industry. He long has been viewed as a rising star in front office circles, and the Cubs were disappointed when Zaidi called to ask for permission to interview Harris for the open GM job in San Francisco.
Zaidi initially had called Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer to ask about manager candidates, but he called back later and asked about Harris, who was then a young and relatively unknown assistant general manager.
"I got off the phone and I was like, 'Ahh, good. He didn't ask about Scott,'" Hoyer recalled later. "And then he called me about two weeks later and I saw his name and I kinda knew what the phone call was about."
Harris was a popular hire from day one and served a crucial role in the front office. He was instrumental in helping the Giants acquire Kris Bryant at the trade deadline last year, the biggest move thus far for this new regime.
The Giants expected after the 2021 season that they would start to get poached -- and they did lose hitting coach Donnie Ecker to the Texas Rangers -- but they surely hoped that Harris, a Redwood City native, would stick around a few more years before an inevitable promotion.
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As Zaidi enters a huge offseason, he now will have to look for a new No. 2 for the baseball operations department.