SAN FRANCISCO — The so-called king of preparation didn’t seem to have anything prepared for his opening remarks.
Buster Posey rattled off some platitudes and truisms before a riff where he remembered some guys. When he ran out of old, legendary Giants to name-drop, he started naming his contemporaries in the game.
There was no talk of philosophy, direction, or structure in Posey’s introductory press conference as the Giants’ director of baseball operations. These are just nice words with little meaning.
Analytics? Posey likes them.
Traditional scouting? He’s for it.
Manager Bob Melvin, who is entering a lame-duck season? Posey’s excited to work with him.
And as for the team’s general manager, the person who sounds like they’ll have the totality of the responsibilities of a director of baseball operations without the title or, I presume, the pay? Well, Posey will just have to find the right guy or gal.
You don’t say?
Posey spent his entire career saying plenty of words but never giving the media or fan base much of anything. Perhaps Tuesday was just an extension of that.
But that was as a player.
Now, he’s the boss. The game has changed. And as the head honcho, Posey must be taken at his word.
And in so many words, he made it clear that there’s no real plan in place in San Francisco. Posey is winging it. The organization is winging it.
This is a $4 billion company, and the most essential aspect of the business is operating on a “we’ll take it as it comes” motto.
If it were anyone other than Posey up there on the dais on Tuesday, Giants fans would be apoplectic.
San Francisco Giants new president of baseball operations Buster Posey takes part in a press conference on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in San Francisco, Calif (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
But because it’s Posey, apparently, this is all fine.
No one has more slack with the fan base (and apparently ownership) than No. 28, and he’s cashing it in right now. Again, you have to respect the confidence of the franchise legend.
And amid the empty rhetoric, Posey made one thing clear: He’s just happy to be part of a team again.
It was such a strange thing to repeat.
Despite there being countless jobs in the organization — including the possibility of jobs he, a part-owner, could create — apparently, the only way Posey could re-create that feeling of brotherhood is to take over the single most crucial job, the duties and responsibilities of which, he admits, he doesn’t yet know.
“Buster is just somebody that asked for the ball,” Giants chairman Greg Johnson said.
Johnson gave it to him without a second thought.
What the Giants are doing is unprecedented in modern baseball.
This isn’t like when Brodie Van Wagenen, a longtime player representative and head of the largest agency’s baseball division, took over the Mets front office.
(He was fired within two years.)
This isn’t like when former MLB pitcher Chris Young took over in Texas, either. Young worked for two years as Jon Daniels’ right-hand man before being promoted to the top job. Craig Breslow, now the Red Sox top decision maker, did four years in the Cubs’ front office before taking over in Boston.
And this sure as hell isn’t John Lynch with the 49ers. Football and baseball are apples and oranges when it comes to the responsibilities of the head honcho, if, for nothing more than the sheer number of players in baseball — more than 5,000 in the offseason, on top of international, college, and high-school prospects.
NFL front offices are littered with former players. MLB front offices are run by Ivy League grads who opted against running a hedge fund to make fantasy baseball real life.
To do something this bold — to think this far outside the box — is, frankly, beneath the Giants’ organization.
Why think outside the box? The box is full of money. Use it to attract a top mind to fix this mess.
But the Giants didn’t interview anyone else for the gig. Posey said he wanted it, and he was given it without any sort of serious apprenticeship.
They didn’t bring in Mike Chernoff of the Guardians or Erik Neander of the Rays for a chat. They didn’t bother to see if former Marlins GM Kim Ng was interested, or if Braves player development guru Ben Sestanovich wanted the job.
What made Buster qualified to lead an entire baseball operations staff? According to Johnson, it’s his “skills,” “intellect,” and “drive.” But also, he’s a great listener, and leader, and he has a lot of pride.
“He’s going to set a tone.”
The Giants have missed the playoffs in five of the last six seasons. I don’t think “tone” is the issue here.
All those traits might make Posey beloved by fans and a favorite of the media, but they are hardly unique qualities. Yes, the game, like all professions, has its fair share of bad communicators and idiots (the former issue did Farhan Zaidi in). Still, there are capable, impressive people all around this sport, and many of them have a track record of success building up farm systems, player development plans, and optimizing 40-man rosters.
Posey has to fix all three of those things and do it with what appears to be Zaidi’s staff.
To me, this all reeks of cronyism.
Worse yet, Posey won’t just do ownership’s bidding. He is ownership.
And when did Giants fans — who have been bellyaching about how this team has been run for years — change their tune on the owners?
But Posey sounded like he wanted to be a figurehead on Tuesday, not the man pushing all the buttons.
San Francisco Giants new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, center, takes part in a press conference with Chairman Greg Johnson, right, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in San Francisco, Calif (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
It’s his finger on those buttons until he finds someone else to do that job, though.
You can hardly blame Posey, the ultra-competitor, for “wanting the ball” in a moment like this. Someone needs to pull this team out of its now-perennial morass, and Posey’s smarts, legacy, competitive fire, and fiscal entanglement make him an outstanding candidate to be part of the solution.
But his fellow Giants owners made Posey the singular solution.
They might be able to formulate a plan in the coming days, weeks, and months, but the Giants fired Zaidi and his general manager, put Posey in charge, and haven’t really gotten to anything after that.
On Zaidi’s way out of town, he dropped a couple of nuggets of truth on his tenure.
This isn’t to exonerate him from the mess the Giants now face — it’s only to say he wasn’t the sole proprietor of the team’s fate.
One quote stood out above the rest.
“But I think it’s my responsibility, and as an organization, we have to figure out our identity and not feel like just because the strategy is successful, it’s the right thing for us,” said Zaidi.
It makes you wonder: Is Posey’s appointment about winning, or is it about restoring the mystique of the Giants?
Is this just to quell the constant KNBR clamoring to return to the way things were a decade ago, when the ball was dead, Statcast didn’t exist, and “real” baseball men ran the show?
In short: an era that is long gone and never coming back?
Sure seems like it.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe running a professional baseball team in a big market is much easier than I believe it to be. Maybe it’s just that easy for someone like Posey. How could we mere mortals understand?
Related Articles
When SF Giants lacked identity, leadership, Buster Posey ‘asked for the ball’
Buster Posey announces SF Giants GM Putila will move to new role
SF Giants hiring Buster Posey to lead baseball ops looks desperate
Giant shakeup: Farhan Zaidi out, Buster Posey in at top of SF baseball ops
SF Giants end disappointing season with loss to Cardinals, securing losing record
Perhaps things like culture and magic are actually real and not simply lazy catch-alls folks use to try to explain situations that don’t quite add up logically.
But it’s one thing for the fan base to be tapping into the spirit of an even-year magic run (as we head into an odd-numbered year). It’s something else for ownership to do it, too.
“We’re in the memory-making business,” Posey said. “The entertainment business.”
No, Buster, that’s the Savannah Bananas.
The Giants are in the business of winning. That’s how you entertain. That’s how you create memories.
How’s he going to do that?
I guess it’s just a mystery.
San Francisco Giants new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, left, arrives to a press conference with CEO Larry Baer, second from left, and Chairman Greg Johnson, right, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in San Francisco, Calif (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)