© Kyle Terada | 2020 Jul 5
Buster Posey is entering what could be his final spring training with the Giants.
Whoa.
Say what?
He just got here.
Since his startling and beautiful rookie season of 2010, until last season’s pandemic opt-out, Buster Posey’s calm, capable, championship presence as a San Francisco Giant is a constant in our lives. We need constants in our lives, as I was just saying to my living room-dwelling kids who are not going to school full-time.
Buster Posey not a Giant? In the name of Market Street confetti, say it ain’t so.
Now, let’s not work ourselves into a Jock Blog panic. The contract he signed in March of 2013 was an eight-year, $159 million deal that takes him through this season, 2021. There is a club option for next year, meaning if the Giants want, they can keep him for $22 million.
There is also a club option to buy him out of 2022, for a relative pittance of $3 million.
Gulp.
You’ll note the Giants drafted not one, but two heir apparents in the first round of the MLB Draft in the past three years. Posey looks to his left in Scottsdale, and there’s Joey Bart. He looks to his right, and there’s Patrick Bailey. If he looks over his shoulder, well . . . don’t do that. Satchel Paige warned against it.
Yes, there is a scenario where the DH comes to the National League and Posey can re-up with the Giants on a new, more team-friendly number and spends 2022 and beyond as a hybrid 1B-DH-catcher emeritus. That’s not an entirely unappealing scenario, either. It keeps Posey’s level head and encyclopedic knowledge of hitters, pitchers and how to play the game in the clubhouse.
But there is also the unknown scenario: where Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris map out a post-Posey future after this season, hand him the gold watch, thank him for all the Buster Hugs and that grand slam in Cincinnati in 2012 and send him on his way. We don’t know how the new regime handles things like this. We are still getting to know them.
Like I said: Gulp.
It forces a Giants fan to come to a reckoning with his or her own relationship with Posey. And that’s where things get gooey and sentimental. Of all the characters that colored those unforgettable championship years, Posey has been the most constant and easiest to take for granted. Madison Bumgarner rode a horse to raise a flag. Brian Wilson grew a beard you’ll never forget. Sergio Romo told us what was up. Mike Morse never stopped smiling. Hunter Pence’s socks were pulled up to his neck. Brandon Crawford made dazzling play after dazzling play, hair flying.
But Posey? While the accolades piled up — Rookie of the Year, MVP, batting champ, Silver Sluggers — he stayed in the crouch, cloaked in his gear. He received pitch after pitch with dexterity and grace. He gave the lowest-wattage post-game interviews you could ever imagine. He stirred exactly zero beehives of controversy.
He even came back from a staggering injury, a destructive explosion of his leg in 2011 by winning an MVP and a World Series — and strutted not at all about any of it.
And now we find ourselves staring Buster Posey’s San Francisco Giant mortality in its face. What if this is his last year as a Giant? Would a crowd-reducing pandemic even allow the kind of love-fest from the fans he deserves? Are you ready to ponder any of this?
I don’t think I am. We’ll have to navigate this one together. Like Buster said on Wednesday to the reporters: He’ll just take it day-by-day. So will we.
Placid, rational, smart Buster. As always.