In 2008, a new Giants amateur scouting director had just taken the reins, looking to get the team’s fading talent pipeline flowing again. With the No. 5 overall pick, that scouting director — John Barr — selected future franchise cornerstone Buster Posey, and the rest was history.

Well, you know what they say about history and its tendency to repeat. A decade later, the Giants are again looking to reinvigorate a stagnant minor-league talent pool and are relying on a new amateur scouting director to lead a draft in which the team carries a top-10 pick. This time, it’s Michael Holmes, who until earlier this month had spent his entire professional baseball career with the A’s, first as a player and then as a scout. He had served as the A’s assistant scouting director since 2009.

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While with the A’s, Holmes and Farhan Zaidi — now the new Giants president of baseball operations — worked together for 10 years. Zaidi says his familiarity with Holmes’ evaluation style and people management skills made Holmes a prime target to head his amateur scouting department.

“I always had a really good personal and professional relationship with him,” Zaidi said of Holmes in a phone interview Tuesday. “He’s a tremendous people person and had good relationships not just with area scouts and supervisors but with the rest of us in the front office. I think he’s a real connector of people.

“I feel fortunate that I was in a position to hire someone who I had been in 10 draft rooms with and I had that extensive experience with talking about players, having seen how he goes through the evaluation process, weighing what his eyes are telling him against some of the other information we have.”

Holmes began his professional baseball career in 1997, when he was selected by the A’s in the 18th round of the draft out of Wake Forest. After spending four seasons pitching in the lower levels of the A’s system, Holmes joined the Wake Forest coaching staff. Holmes says he enjoyed his time as a coach, but when current A’s scouting director Eric Kubota offered him the opportunity to return to the professional game as a scout, he jumped at the chance.

“I really enjoyed my few small sample years of college coaching, but I did miss the professional game, and I missed the A’s because it’s such a tight-knit family,” Holmes said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “The people there have been together for so long, whether it be Eric or Keith Lieppman or Billy (Beane). The opportunity to get back with those guys off the field in more of a scouting role was something I wanted to do. I obviously did it for quite some time and I couldn’t have had a better experience for all my years over there with all those people and it was mostly because of the people.”

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Holmes began his career as the A’s area scout in the Carolinas, where he quickly developed a reputation as one of the top scouts in that region. Holmes would later serve as the A’s East Coast cross-checker before being named assistant scouting director. Kubota says that over the years, he delegated more and more responsibility to Holmes.

“I can’t think of a more qualified person than Holmsie,” Kubota said over the phone on Tuesday. “Obviously, I’m a little biased — well, a lot biased — but Michael’s a great evaluator. Really, really strong baseball person. He’s curious and he’s open-minded and engaged in trying to learn new ways to evaluate. Probably more than his evaluation skills, he’s just a great person who’s going to be a great leader of people.”

Holmes had been considered for other scouting director positions before landing his job with the Giants. Kubota has no doubt that Holmes is ready for the challenge of running the department.

“Whether it came to scheduling or dealing with the area guys (with the A’s), he’s been really fully immersed in running a department for years now,” he said.

Zaidi says Holmes’ connections in the amateur scouting world are invaluable.

“He was able — and continues to be able — to get really good information on players in terms of their makeup and background and how they’re going to adjust and acclimate to pro ball,” Zaidi said.

Kubota says one of Holmes’ strengths is his ability to take in new information and apply it to his scouting approach.

“The great thing about scouting — and I tell this to all of our guys the day we hire them — you learn something new every day or you have the opportunity to learn something new every day,” Kubota said. “When you stop and you think you know it all, that’s the day to get out of scouting. I think Holmsie has completely embraced that philosophy and is always open and always trying to learn every day.”

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Holmes says that while the fundamentals of scouting haven’t changed significantly over his nearly two decades in the business, the amount of data scouts have on players has exploded.

“The information you get on players — whether it be high school, junior college or college — there’s just a lot more out there for us, whether it be through technology or social media,” Holmes said. “I think fans in general know more about these players than they did 10-15 years ago. There’s so much access to them.

“As far as evaluating tools and how we go about attacking a season, I don’t think a lot of that has really changed. You’re trying to identify a player’s tools. You’re trying to identify makeup. You’re trying to identify a player’s fit with the organization. You’re still attacking the season with your group, whether it be area scouts or cross-checkers or national guys, special assistants. We’re all still trying to get out and get as many looks as we can. But I still think the amount of information that you get in a scouting season has increased, which has changed a little bit of the way you go about the so-called setting up of a (draft) board.”

One way the draft itself has changed in recent years is how the first 10 rounds are handled now that MLB has a draft bonus pool allotment for each team. With each team given a set cap on what they can spend on bonuses for players selected in the top 10 rounds, teams have had to be strategic about how they draft later in those first 10 rounds to ensure they can afford to sign all of those top-10 round picks. Some teams have significantly shifted their draft philosophies to account for the cap. Holmes, however, sticks with a more traditional approach.

“I think there’s all types of ways to attack (the pool) and different teams have tried to figure out how to best attack the pool situation and make it work for them,” he said. “I’m still a big believer in trying to take the best available player and not really sacrifice how we make a pool work just to fit certain players in. I’d ideally like to attack it as, ‘We’re on the clock. Who’s the next best available player?’ Because I don’t think necessarily sacrificing talent to make the pool work has made for the best strategy.”

Holmes aims to make the transition between his tenure and Barr’s as smooth as possible. He says he spent much of the recent Winter Meetings in discussions with Barr, who had run the Giants’ amateur scouting department for a decade and remains in the Giants organization in an advisory role.

“John was the first person I called after I was hired because it was important to me to reach out to him,” Holmes said. “I’ve known him for some time being on the other side of the Bay. I think the world of him not only professionally but also personally. I think he’s a tremendous person.

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“At the Winter Meetings, we spent a lot of time together talking. It was a good opportunity for me to let him know that I still wanted him to be a part of this because the resource to have him around to run ideas by and talk over things and, most importantly, his history of evaluating is definitely something I want him to be a part of.”

Zaidi says of Barr remaining involved in the Giants’ draft discussions: “I think this is going to give us a chance to get the best of both worlds in terms of the evaluation process.”

With the Giants selecting 10th in the upcoming draft, the organization will once again have the opportunity to add elite talent in the top rounds of the draft, just as they did last season when they selected second overall. Zaidi says his familiarity with Holmes’ evaluation style will be an asset for the upcoming draft.

“John Barr and his group have had some really successful drafts and produced the core of three championship teams. That’s obviously a really impressive accomplishment and what we’re hoping to do here again,” he said.

“But after spending some time with different people in the organization and assessing what I thought was kind of best for us going forward — especially since we’ll be drafting (this year) in a premium position — somebody who I have a personal history with and firsthand experience in how he breaks down and evaluates players, how he grades players at the very top of the draft, when we are going to be making a really important decision, for me, that brought a lot of comfort.”

Holmes isn’t looking to make sweeping changes to the department in terms of personnel at the moment. He’s hired two new area scouts (D.J. Jauss of the Upper Midwest Region and Tim Osborne of Georgia), but both positions were open when Holmes joined the Giants. He says the organization will go into the 2019 draft season with the scouting team they have currently assembled.

“I’m perfectly happy with that and I think there are some really good people in place that will help us have a strong staff and make some good decisions,” Holmes said.

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Since the release of “Moneyball,” a lot has been made of the A’s reliance on data when putting together their draft board. While Holmes has a strong background in incorporating analytics into the team’s draft evaluations, he still places a significant value on getting in-person looks at players. He plans to see as many of the top-of-the-board candidates as his schedule allows, but he is also comfortable basing draft-day decisions on the opinions of his scouting staff.

“We’re all humans so we all want to see stuff with our own eyes. I also know that it’s not necessary for me to have seen a player once we get to a certain point in the draft for us to select or not to select him,” he said. “My goal as a director is to surround myself with good people and good evaluators where we can roll with their decisions and the decisions can be very good ones.

“I’ve never, in any way, shape or form, felt that I needed to see a player for us to select him, but ideally if we go about the game plan that’s in place in terms of how we’re going to structure it and get out and see players, I will see the better ones at the top and then we’ll be able to take guys the further we get down in the draft based off what other guys on the staff think, whether I’ve seen them or not.”

Zaidi himself spent time scouting top-round draft candidates in person when he was in the A’s front office. He is limited by the demands of his current position as to how many players he can scout in person, but Zaidi says there is a lot of value in having front-office personnel in the stands with the scouting staff.

“As much as anything else, getting out (on the scouting trail) is a way for me to support the scouting staff, to support Holmsie and be able to spend some time with the area scouts you otherwise might not get one-on-one time with,” he said. “I think it’s good for organizational morale for people in the front office to get out there and see players, in addition to the fact that it adds another perspective to the evaluation.”

Of course, after the A’s selected Oklahoma two-sport sensation Kyler Murray with the ninth overall pick last season, the question remains, will Holmes be scouting the 2019 Heisman candidate list this spring?

“I tell you what, what an unbelievable season (Murray) had,” Holmes said, laughing at the question. “We (the A’s scouting department) knew he was good. I’m not quite sure we realized he was that good on the football field. It’s just a testament to the kind of kid he is.

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“He’s a tremendous kid with a tremendous work ethic and a special talent on the baseball diamond as well. We knew in Oakland it was a way for us to get very athletic up the middle very quickly. I’m not sure any of us thought he’d be in New York accepting the (Heisman) award.”

The A’s have yet to fill the assistant scouting director position left vacant by Holmes, although Kubota says he is working on filling the spot now. While the position will be filled at some point, Kubota says Holmes himself will be difficult to replace.

“There’s no one person,” he said, “who’s going to come in here and replace what Michael has done for us over the years.”

(Photo by Alex Trautwig/MLB Photos via Getty Images)