How a lifetime in baseball set Minasian up to be Giants GM

SAN FRANCISCO -- When you're the general manager for a team on the West Coast, the text messages from rival executives and agents arrive before the sun comes up, but that's not a problem for Zack Minasian. 

The new No. 2 in the Giants' revamped front office was promoted about six months after his first child was born, which means he often has a good reason for already being awake at 5 a.m. Minasian always has been an early riser, though, and that led to one of his first experiences related 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' amateur scouting director. 

"I remember him turning to me and saying, 'If we were picking number one, we would be taking 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 move that altered 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 Minasian, who was a surprise choice not just to outsiders, but also to both men. 

Posey admitted after the announcement that he didn't expect Minasian to rise to the top of his search process. Minasian listened to Posey get introduced as the new leader of baseball operations and thought that perhaps he could provide all that Posey was looking for in a partner, but those dreams started to float away within a few days of that initial press conference. 

The two had a couple of early conversations about scouting, and Minasian considered himself fortunate that Posey was so immediately comfortable with him continuing in his role leading the organization's pro scouting efforts. But on a Saturday morning in October, Posey called and asked if Minasian would be interested in interviewing for the open GM job. 

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 stuck his hand out during a meeting and offered the job. Minasian shook it, and then told his new boss that he also needed to give him a hug. 

The moment was the culmination of a lifetime spent working toward that handshake. Posey wanted someone with a scouting background, someone who would be comfortable with every single 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 that is relatable, someone that can not only empower the players or agents that they may come in contact with, but also can relate to the guys or girls on our coaching staff, our medical staff, our strength staff," Posey said at the start of his search. "Because all of those people matter so much for us to accomplish our ultimate goal."

Nobody knows that better than Minasian. From the time 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 a clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers for more than two decades. The four Minasian boys helped out on the visiting side at first, watching in awe as players like George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr. and Robin Yount walked into the room every time a new opponent arrived, but they weren't just there to swipe bubble gum and bank stories that would make their classmates jealous.

Minasian remembers unpacking equipment trucks at four in the morning and then going to high school classes a few hours later. After one brother, Perry, became GM of the Los Angeles Angels, another, Rudy, told USA Today that the Minasians "washed a lot of jocks and scrubbed a lot of toilets for one of us to get a GM job." It was hard work, but it set them on a path. Two of the brothers are now MLB general managers and a third works for the Atlanta Braves. 

"The understanding was you can come in this clubhouse, but you have to work," Minasian said of his childhood. "I probably broke a lot of child labor laws, but I was in there working and myself and my brothers, we loved every minute of it."

Well, not every minute. When their father got moved to the home clubhouse, the Minasians got to celebrate wins with Rangers players, coaches and clubhouse staffers, but those long seasons taught the youngest of the four a lesson that has stuck with him. There's nothing but silence in the minutes after a loss. 

"I don't know if I got addicted to the winning as much as I just hated losing," Minasian said. 

Those seasons taught lessons that Minasian would take to Milwaukee, where he spent 14 years and became the youngest pro scouting director in baseball when he was just 27. 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, that had its roots in that 2008 MLB Draft. 

With Posey long gone, the Brewers selected infielder Brett Lawrie, who was dealt to the Toronto Blue Jays two years later in exchange for right-hander Shaun Marcum. Giants fans might know the pitcher for serving up Brandon Crawford's first career homer a year after that trade, but in Milwaukee, Marcum was a reliable rotation piece, helping the Brewers finish a couple of wins short of a pennant. 

Minasian was hired away by Farhan Zaidi in 2019, a crucial step in his career, but a bittersweet one for a longtime mentor. His grandfather and father were close with former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who became young Zack's godfather. 

"When I got hired here, he swore at me and called me Benedict Arnold," Minasian said, smiling. 

Three years later, Minasian was promoted to VP of pro scouting, and it took just two years after that move for Posey to zero in on him as his partner during a crucial period for the organization. It's a role Minasian has been preparing for his whole career, as he views his background in pro scouting as occasionally requiring him to play GM for 29 other teams. 

But really, it's a role Minasian has been preparing for since he was five years old and first stepped into the clubhouse.

"It's funny, people talk about rising from the bottom. I never viewed working in that clubhouse as the bottom," he said. "It was a privilege. We had a lot of great players, coaches, executives [and] front office people that looked out for myself and my brothers. My father invested in us. And I'm here as a credit to all of them."

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