Buster Posey couldn’t say no to the Giants

The seven-time All-Star excited about running the team’s baseball operations

By John Perrotto

Buster Posey did not need a job. And he certainly didn’t need the 24/7/365 lifestyle that is part of that job as well as the accompanying scrutiny from fans and the media.

Yet Posey could not resist the challenge of restoring the San Francisco Giants to glory, the franchise he helped lead to World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Already one of the team’s minority owners, Posey readily said yes when team chairman Greg Johnson asked if he would assume the role of President of baseball Operations in October after Farhan Zaidi was fired.

So why would Posey take on the stress of running a team after earning $171 million during an 11-year career that was spent entirely with the Giants and ended when he retired following the 2021 season?

“I love baseball,” Posey told Draft Nation. “This was just an opportunity where I feel like I could have an impact with the front office team, putting great players on the field. It was the opportunity to do in a part of the country that my wife and I love. It was just such a very unique opportunity that I couldn’t pass the chance up.”

The Giants would have been hard-pressed to find a more popular choice among their fans.

Posey was the Giants’ first-round draft pick in 2008, the National League Rookie of the Year in 2010 and MVP in 2012. He was also selected to seven All-Star Games as a catcher, won five Silver Sluggers as well as one Gold Glove and one batting title.

The Giants have had only one winning season in the last eight years, going 107-55 in Posey’s final season as a player to win the NL West. However, they lost to the division rival Los Angeles Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs and haven’t won a postseason series since beating the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 World Series.

This year, the Giants finished 80-82. They were also 18th in the major leagues in ERA and 20th in batting average, suggesting Posey needs to upgrade the roster in all areas.

Johnson has given Posey the green light to pursue high-end free agents and shortstop Willy Adames is believed to be at the top of the Giants’ list. Adames is 29 and coming off an outstanding season with the Milwaukee Brewers, hitting .251/.331/.462 with 32 home runs and 21 stolen bases in 161 games.

The Giants are also pursuing this winter’s premier free agent, outfielder Juan Soto. However, if Soto signs with a team on the West Coast, it would almost certainly be the Dodgers.

Posey also would like to reunite with left-hander Blake Snell, even though the two-time Cy Young Award winner declined his player option with the Giants for 2025.

Though Zaidi was still technically in charge, Posey was instrumental in the Giants signing third baseman Matt Chapman to a six-year, $151-million contract extension late in the season before the five-time Gold Glove winner could return to the open market.

Posey is learning quickly about the responsibilities of his new job.

“I’m a pretty Point A to Point B person, but I’m probably not the best at juggling seven or eight messages and emails and phone calls and then trying to gather them together,” Posey said. “I’d say, for the most part, some mornings, it’s phone calls pretty much when you get up, and then it’s conversations, then more phone calls. It’s also kind of fun, too. We’ll see in a year if it’s fun or not.”

Posey is looking to change the Giants’ culture as well as their roster. The organization became very analytics heavy under Zaidi. While Posey isn’t anti numbers, he would like the franchise to return to those World Series-winning ways that were fueled by then-GM Brian Sabean and a strong scouting department.

“You have to measure what the information is telling you with scouts and what their years and years and years and years and years and years of evaluating players and what their eyes tell them,” Posey said. “There’s probably subtleties that they pick up, whether it’s on-field stuff or interactions that they see with the player and their parents or a player and their friends that maybe they can’t even articulate. But after seeing it for so many years, there’s something that they (instinctually) know as either a good thing or a bad thing. I think that is really important when you’re talking about bringing a player to your system.”