Alden GonzalezMar 21, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
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- ESPN baseball reporter. Lined the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Buster Posey’s spring coaching place of work, at one nook of a sprawling indoor facility hooked up to Scottsdale Stadium, is nondescript and most commonly barren, save for some attire packing containers that experience stacked up in the back of his table. The partitions are noticeably empty, devoid of mementos from a catching profession that incorporated an MVP, a Gold Glove and 5 Silver Sluggers. The one trace that probably the most celebrated gamers in San Francisco Giants historical past now occupies an area reserved for the top of baseball operations is a nameplate outdoor the door.
Posey, six days shy of his thirty eighth birthday and not more than six months got rid of from accepting a role few folks of his stature have ever taken on, spent a dozen years looking to will the Giants to victory. Now, he has a distinct function: to methodically information them there, inch by means of inch, assembly by means of assembly, transaction by means of transaction.
It has required some letting cross.
“As a participant, I’d are available each day and feature a listing in my thoughts of what I sought after to perform, whether or not it was once within the weight room or hitting or catching, and now, on this function, I feel the easiest way to explain it’s — it is roughly a loss of regulate, up to anything else,” Posey mentioned. “Since you had the facility as a participant to at once affect results, and now the affect is attempting to create a roster of fellows that experience the similar mentality and need to cross out and take a look at to win a large number of baseball video games.”
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That, necessarily, is the objective. Posey was once on the heart of International Sequence titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014, however the Giants have made the playoffs best two times since. Beneath Farhan Zaidi, the person Posey changed as president of baseball operations in September, the Giants did not win sufficient video games and did not make sufficient strides to justify the losses. Additionally, in line with a lot of those that know the group in detail, the Giants gave the impression to lack id, attract, soul.
Posey is striving to switch that. He desires to construct the Giants right into a constant, sustained winner, identical to Zaidi tried to do during the last six years, however he additionally desires them to be a laugh. He desires to deviate from the analytical roster-building way that has overtaken the business, prioritizing hyper-efficiency and putting much less emphasis on flair and revel in. He desires to build indelible Giants groups the group can rally round, how it used to for many of the earlier decade.
Posey has regularly mentioned that folks in his place are within the “memory-making industry,” a nod to his trust that those don’t seem to be simply baseball groups they are overseeing, however civic establishments.
His gambling profession taught him that.
“I have met lovers ahead of that in reality really feel like they know me, simply as a result of how a lot baseball is on TV,” Posey mentioned. “That is one thing that is necessary to me. I need our fan base to have that reference to our gamers. I am hopeful that the 10-year-old available in the market is pulling on his or her mother’s coattail and pronouncing, ‘I need to cross in as a result of I need to see Participant X-Y-Z these days.’ They need to cross purchase the jerseys. So yeah, it’s about profitable. In the beginning, it is about profitable. However I feel the tales make the profitable even higher.”
Posey, who retired 3 seasons in the past, shall be eligible for the Corridor of Repute starting in 2027. Given the hot induction of Joe Mauer, any other standout catcher who did not acquire the combination numbers of a conventional Corridor of Famer however made up for it with a dominant height, there is a just right likelihood he’s going to be enshrined in Cooperstown then. He’d achieve this at the heels of a gambling profession that noticed him earn greater than $150 million, which makes one marvel why Posey would willingly tackle this kind of challenging process.
To him, it is easy: He feels a accountability to the Giants, and he continues to own this unrelenting need to check himself.
“It is a problem, and it is laborious to show down a problem,” Posey mentioned. “You need to look, ‘Is it one thing that I will be able to do?’ ‘Is it one thing that I will like doing?’ ‘Is it one thing that I will be just right at?’ There is clearly questions. You might be like, ‘I do not know, am I going to be just right at this?’ It is not the similar as gambling baseball. It is other.”
POSEY ADDRESSED THE Giants ahead of their first full-squad exercise Feb. 17, stressing the significance of basics and the facility of concord. He’s nonetheless making an attempt to determine easy methods to stability interacting with gamers and keeping up a wholesome distance from the clubhouse, as maximum front-facing executives generally tend to.
“I need to be to be had, I need them to grasp I care, I need them to grasp that I am looking at — however I do not need to overstep, both,” Posey mentioned. “There are going to be tricky conversations, inevitably, sooner or later. I’m hoping to function, in some way, as clear as I will be able to with them. There is positive issues that you are not going to mention simply because they do not want to be mentioned; they are inappropriate sooner or later. And there may be going to be instances, I do know, when gamers shall be pissed off. However my intent goes to be no matter is best possible for the San Francisco Giants, and expectantly that may come via.”
Posey is not too a ways got rid of from being considered one of them. After opting out of the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season to stick with his spouse, Kristen, whilst they cared for an followed set of untimely dual ladies, Posey got here again in 2021, made his 7th All-Superstar group, then promptly retired.
Patrick Bailey, the Giants’ present catcher, was once a 22-year-old completing his first complete season {of professional} baseball then. He chuckled when requested if he idea Posey could be operating the baseball-operations division inside of 3 years.
“Nah,” he mentioned. “I figured he’d nonetheless be gambling.”
Posey first of all returned to his house state of Georgia to start a brand new bankruptcy in his existence. It lasted a few yr. In September 2022, he joined the Giants’ possession workforce and likewise shaped a part of a six-person board of administrators, a task that incorporated collaborating in conferences about payroll configuration and offering enter on participant acquisitions.
Posey additionally was inquisitive about high-profile recruiting efforts, maximum significantly round Shohei Ohtani, whose signing with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers in December 2023 — the continuation of a pattern that had noticed different stars like Aaron Pass judgement on and Bryce Harper signal somewhere else — triggered Posey to voice his fear that destructive perceptions about San Francisco had been hurting their possibilities. 9 months later, when the Giants had been running to fasten up Matt Chapman, Posey invited the All-Superstar 3rd baseman to his house, added a no-trade clause, eradicated deferrals and helped finalize a six-year, $151 million extension.
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Posey can not recall a particular second that triggered him to pursue this process however mentioned his “wheels began turning somewhat bit” whilst serving at the board.
“I believed that in the future it could be one thing a laugh to take a look at,” he added. “I did not suppose it would be as fast.”
Different individuals of the Giants’ possession workforce first of all thought of having Posey function an assistant inside of Zaidi’s baseball-operations division, chairman Greg Johnson instructed ESPN. “However the extra we went down that trail, the extra we discovered that that would create extra rigidity and uncertainty within the clubhouse having the ones two heads there, and that in reality were given us to the purpose of speaking at once to Buster about doing it.
“My feeling was once he was once somewhat hesitant in the beginning,” Johnson added, “and I feel we had been somewhat hesitant. I feel we roughly felt like the easiest state of affairs could be possibly a pair extra years down the street, however timing does not at all times determine that manner.”
The extra the 2 facets spoke, the extra Posey gave the impression to heat as much as the speculation. Kristen’s improve solidified his resolution.
“I am very fortunate to have this kind of supportive spouse as a result of I went from mainly being a full-time man-ny to now having a full-time process,” Posey mentioned. “It is been an adjustment at house.”
Posey has any other set of twins, a boy and a lady, who’re 13 now, sufficiently old to own vibrant recollections in their father as a celeb baseball participant. The more youthful pair are simply 4. A part of the rationale he took this on was once as a result of he sought after his youngsters to look him running. He felt it might be necessary for them to witness the worth of construction and sacrifice. However he most certainly may have completed that with some of the cush special-assistant jobs bestowed upon prominent former gamers.
It did not must be this.
“I feel he is loopy,” mentioned Zack Minasian, the Giants’ normal supervisor and Posey’s new right-hand guy, with amusing. “However he mentioned this to me as soon as ahead of: ‘You were given to be somewhat psycho to be a catcher, and possibly you were given to be somewhat psycho to run baseball operations.'”
A MONTH INTO Posey’s time within the process, baseball’s elite accrued in San Antonio for the overall managers conferences. At the first evening, at a cocktail hour at some of the bars throughout the JW Marriott, Minasian joked that Posey must put on his title tag.
“Truly?” Posey mentioned.
“No,” Minasian instructed him. “We all know who you might be.”
Minasian had spent the previous two decades running in baseball operations, 14 of them with the Milwaukee Brewers. He is accustomed to the dynamics between the 30 entrance workplaces — the cliques that shape, the relationships which are constructed, the fraternizing that regularly takes position, even amongst rival staffs. However he questioned how Posey was once experiencing it for the primary time. At one level he leaned over and requested if any of this was once unexpected. Posey’s reaction was once telling: “Mustn’t we need to kill them?”
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Posey has lengthy been regarded as a herbal chief — such a lot in order that his longtime agent and present adviser, Jeff Berry, has no longer so jokingly steered he may well be president — and a relaxing presence. However inside of him additionally lies a constant competitor. All through his gambling days, it was once continuously in undeniable view. Now, that a part of him comes out extra subtly.
Minasian has spotted it within the aggression that may spill out of him if a gathering does not cross a definite manner, or in how direct he’s going to get when at the telephone with any other agent.
“It is like looking at him play,” Minasian mentioned. “It is a gradual burn — calm, cool, below regulate, however then it burns extraordinarily scorching.”
Earlier than this offseason, Posey had by no means at once negotiated with an agent or labored out a commerce with any other govt. He did not know the collective bargaining settlement in detail, had most certainly a surface-level figuring out of alternative groups’ farm programs and wasn’t well-schooled within the limitless trivialities of roster control. Ambition will best take him thus far. However those that knew him all over his gambling days are fast to indicate different attributes that would possibly ease the transition.
Stephen Vogt, the Cleveland Guardians supervisor who as soon as served as Posey’s backup, referred to as him “the neatest participant at the area.” Toronto Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, a former Massive, referred to as Posey “considered one of my favourite teammates,” noting his consideration to element but in addition how simple he was once to speak to. Chris Younger, the longtime pitcher who’s now the Texas Rangers’ president of baseball operations, thinks Posey shall be a just right delegator, a the most important trait whilst overseeing this kind of large undertaking.
“I do not doubt he’s going to have his moments when he struggles with it,” Younger mentioned, “however Buster is so considerate and humble and worrying, and the ones qualities will take him far.”
4 months into his tenure, Posey’s first main commerce noticed the daddy of 2 units of twins get a divorce any other set of twins, sending reliever Taylor Rogers to the Cincinnati Reds. His first main loose agent signing noticed him smash his personal franchise document for greatest contract — one Posey did not know he nonetheless held.
Ten days into December, the Giants signed veteran shortstop Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million deal, addressing their greatest want with the most productive to be had participant to fill it. They did so by means of appearing aggressively, touchdown Adames ahead of Juan Soto selected his subsequent group and the opposite finalists may pivot. Cash is what most certainly made the variation, as is regularly the case, however Adames was once swayed by means of Posey’s authenticity.
“He was once easy — that he does not need to mainly destroy his legacy as a winner now that he is in a entrance place of work, and that clearly he took this process quicker than he anticipated and he isn’t going to do this to simply come over right here and be any other man,” Adames recalled. “And I consider that.”
The remainder of the offseason evolved slowly. Interests of Garrett Crochet, Corbin Burnes and Roki Sasaki, frontline starters who may have reinforced a rotation that accrued the fewest innings within the Nationwide League ultimate season, did not materialize, prompting Posey and Minasian to take an opportunity on 42-year-old Justin Verlander. Business proposals for arbitration-eligible gamers like Camilo Doval, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Mike Yastrzemski by no means made sufficient sense to drag the cause.
For the reason that they had been mainly doing this for the primary time, Minasian may sense that different entrance workplaces had been “feeling us out,” looking to decide how they are stressed out.
Posey, he believes, may sense it too.
“As a competitor,” Minasian mentioned, “I feel he had a large number of a laugh with that.”
Posey bought loose agent Willy Adames at the Giants this wintry weather. With a revered ex-All-Superstar in rate, Adames believes “guys are gonna suppose otherwise about San Francisco now.” Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Photographs
POSEY IS ONE of best 5 heads of baseball operations who performed within the main leagues, along side the Rangers’ Younger, Craig Breslow of the Boston Purple Sox, Chris Getz of the Chicago White Sox and Jerry Dipoto of the Seattle Mariners.
Over those first few months, Posey has leaned closely on Younger, who pitched within the large leagues from 2004 to 2017. His best possible recommendation, although Posey is not positive if he borrowed it from anyone else, was once that baseball consists only of 2 entities: the gamers at the area and the lovers within the stands.
“The remainder of us,” Younger instructed him, “are simply placing on.”
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Posey is attempting to stay that entrance of thoughts.
“This is not about me,” he mentioned. “That is in the long run concerning the guys at the area and the way they play. I feel that is in reality a large piece of this to me, is for them to know — ‘If this works nicely, this is because you might be gambling nicely.’ There is best such a lot you’ll do.”
Younger, 45, admittedly nonetheless struggles with relinquishing that regulate. As a participant, he mentioned, “I knew what I had to do to lend a hand the group be successful, and it was once about me caring for myself. I used to be no longer only targeted, however I used to be targeted only internally. On this function, it is about the whole lot externally dealing with him. It is about every day serving to others and empowering folks and choosing the proper folks. And it is about everyone else.”
Posey has left a large number of the logistics to Giants assistant GM Jeremy Shelley, who has been with the group for greater than 30 years. Minasian has additionally carried a big load.
All through his in depth time as a pro-scouting director, Minasian took satisfaction in with the ability to play GM for 29 different groups, collecting foundational wisdom at the forms of gamers they valued and what they attempted to leverage. Via that, he additionally constructed the type of relationships with brokers and bosses that Posey is best starting to carve out. Minasian had many of the preliminary conversations over the offseason, and Posey would most often take over close to the top, which speaks to what could be considered one of his most precious characteristics.
Posey’s presence, some consider, must lend a hand the Giants entice loose brokers.
“I imply, you’ve got [Verlander] and me already,” Adames mentioned. “And now we are going to exchange the tradition, and we are going to put the message available in the market that that is other now. We are looking to construct one thing nice; we are looking to construct greatness right here. And now with him operating issues to move recruit, it is going to be superior. As a result of for those who communicate to gamers, and they do not like who is operating the group, they do not like what they are doing within the group — a loose agent man’s no longer going to come back right here.
“However now that you just do issues otherwise right here — and he is looking to do one thing nice — in fact the phrase’s going to come back out like that. Guys are going to suppose otherwise about San Francisco now.”
The Giants proportion a department with the Dodgers, who glance particularly dominant in this day and age. The San Diego Padres and the Arizona Diamondbacks additionally challenge to be higher this season. The Giants want a few of their promising younger beginning pitchers to blossom. They want their offense to change into extra menacing. And so they want to revitalize a farm machine that ranks twenty ninth heading into the season, in line with ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel, in large part as a result of fresh graduations but in addition since the Giants have no longer capitalized sufficient on first-round choices.
Luck, then, may take a little time. However Posey has apparently been attracted to the method. He spent the offseason getting into the workplaces as regularly as imaginable to get accustomed to names and faces and located himself chatting with a large number of clever individuals who regularly shared distinctive concepts. They energized him. And thru that, Posey started to revel in a distinct form of pride.
“I have at all times beloved baseball,” he mentioned. “Since I used to be little, I really like gambling it. However I suppose what I’ve discovered simply in those first 4 or 5 months is that it is a other form of enjoyment, being concerned this manner, however there may be nonetheless a large number of interest there on my finish.”
POSEY’S MOTHER-IN-LAW DIDN’T need him to take this process in the beginning. She was once fearful about how it could tarnish his pristine symbol with the Giants’ fan base, which, given the fraught nature of creating such a lot of high-level choices in what quantities to a sport of likelihood, does not appear unreasonable. However Posey is not letting his thoughts cross there.
“I suppose I am not fearful about it simply because in the long run I do know, my circle of relatives is aware of, folks with regards to me know, that I am going to try this to the most productive of my skill, and I will care about any resolution that I make and each dialog that I’ve,” he mentioned. “I am in reality hopeful that it is a success. But when it is not, existence is going on. It’s going to be OK.”
Posey desires a entrance place of work workforce this is unafraid of the way outsiders would possibly react to positive transactions, and he desires his gamers to “be themselves.”
He additionally desires the Giants to get again to fundamentals.
Complicated metrics are actually ingrained within the cloth of each group, however it is transparent that Posey, extra so than maximum of his friends, desires to mix them with probably the most ideas that had been valued when he performed and are in most cases now disregarded as old-school philosophies.
Posey thinks RBIs subject. He values the off-field advantages of getting veteran gamers in a clubhouse, speaks concerning the significance of “the use of the scoreboard to show us easy methods to act all over a sport” — tightening the strike zone when the rating is shut, no longer taking an additional base with a large lead — and needs the Giants to increase “whole baseball gamers” reasonably than that specialize in measurables.
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His GM (Minasian) comes from a scouting background. His two advisers are an agent who has loudly spoken out about baseball changing into too analytically vulnerable (Berry) and an established govt who made a reputation for himself in a distinct technology (Bobby Evans). One of the crucial males tasked with operating the Giants’ player-development program (Randy Winn) is an ex-teammate whose post-playing profession have been extra aimed toward training.
Early in his tenure, Posey introduced he would transfer the analytics place of work out of the entrance of the clubhouse, a call that was once noticed most commonly as symbolic. For spring coaching, he invited a bunch of former Giants gamers to function visitor instructors, a rarity below Zaidi.
“We are within the day and age of analytics, and he is somewhat bit extra of a conventional philosopher,” Giants supervisor Bob Melvin mentioned. “His instincts in reality had been a part of who he was once as a participant.”
Greg Johnson believes there was once “rigidity between the old-school fashion and the new-school analytics” below Zaidi, including: “There was once some noise coming from the clubhouse that possibly we did not have the fitting stability.”
Reached by means of telephone, Zaidi, who has since returned to the Dodgers as an adviser, mentioned he by no means were given that impact. Zaidi mentioned he maintained an open-door coverage for gamers to speak about the group’s procedure and frequently spoke with Melvin to make sure they were not running in both extremity.
“Via that channel, I were given sure comments,” Zaidi added. “Whilst you postmortem issues, possibly you’ve got a distinct lens on it, but it surely was once one thing that I used to be very aware of, right through my time with the Giants and in particular ultimate yr.”
Posey’s center of attention isn’t such a lot on doing issues other from Zaidi, he mentioned, however on forging a brand new id. Minasian wired that the Giants will search a “wholesome stability” between new-school and old-school philosophies, and probably the most early indicators — ordering two Trajekt pitching machines over the offseason, holding the research-and-development workforce intact after lead analyst Michael Schwartze left for the Atlanta Braves — display that numbers will nonetheless subject.
However they may not imply the whole lot, and that during itself feels other.
In his talks with Posey, Verlander discovered it refreshing to keep up a correspondence with a decision-maker who valued qualities the analytics may no longer measure. Whether or not that may in reality yield higher effects is an open query, one who has been roundly debated for years, however Verlander is hopeful.
“I feel it might very a lot be one thing that can result in having a greater group,” Verlander mentioned. “It is like me pitching and most certainly him hitting and catching against the top of his profession — you had been introduced up in an age ahead of analytics, and so you’ve got this wealth of intuition. And that is why it is laborious to position phrases on it as a result of you’ve got most of these instincts that you just won over the years from gambling the sport, after which swiftly you might be inundated with numbers.
“I feel the most productive gamers had been in a position to move, ‘OK, I see this, I see this,’ and put all of them in combination, and also you get one thing magical, in reality. And if he is in a position to do this as a president, as an individual bringing in gamers, there may be attainable for one thing that is simply magical.”
