These Giants, from front office to clubhouse, are speaking Buster Posey’s language

From the locker rooms and practice fields at Scottsdale Stadium to the minor-league complex at Papago Park and now to every major-league facility on the Giants’ 2025 schedule, all roads lead to the office of the president of baseball operations.

It’s the “Buster Posey Era, Part II.”

The common denominator behind the Giants’ game planning, schemes, and strategies for 2025 will be the same as for the Giants’ championship runs of 2010, 2012, and 2014, when Posey was the team’s star catcher. Only now, he’s calling all the shots, not just the pitches.

When the Giants open the season Thursday at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, and continue into the summer months, Posey’s fingerprints will be all over what transpires on the field.

This is Posey’s team again, and no one with memories of the championship teams, no one who recalls the heralded catcher’s contributions, no one who followed his journey to joining the ownership group and then becoming baseball boss would dispute he’s the right guy for the moment.

“We tried to do things a certain way,” said opening day starter Logan Webb, referring to recent seasons with Farhan Zaidi running the show. “It didn’t work out. Now we have a new direction and vision of what we want the team to look like, and Buster is very much the guy to lead that along with BoMel [manager Bob Melvin].”

With Melvin already in place as manager, Posey made two major hires, hand-picking Zack Minasian as general manager and Randy Winn as vice president of player development, each of whom has committed to incorporating Posey’s messages into their daily tasks. Same with hitting coach Pat Burrell and pitching coach J.P. Martinez.

With leadership aligned, the Giants’ training camp was a resounding success — that is, except for outfielder Jerar Encarnación’s fractured hand, the only major injury to a frontline player. They posted the best spring training record among the 30 teams, all along emphasizing what worked so well during the championship era.

It all starts with pitching and defense, which is pretty much Posey’s calling card. The defense was generally clean — no one seemed concerned with perennial Gold Glover Matt Chapman’s shaky glove work in the final days in the desert — and the pitching was mostly outstanding, especially in the rotation.

Webb and former Cy Young Award winners Justin Verlander and Robbie Ray showed the importance of attacking the strike zone and limiting walks — the Giants had by far the best strikeout-to-walk ratio this spring — and shortstop Willy Adames’ influence was felt on the offense, including situational hitting and the simple chore of hitting the other way to move runners over.

It all goes back to the first day of training camp when Posey stood in the middle of the Scottsdale Stadium clubhouse and addressed the team about his vision for the future, by all accounts an inspirational moment for the 2025 Giants.

“First day, when he came in, he gave a great speech, and everyone was pretty fired up about it,” Webb said. “He emphasized what he wants to see out of this group. When I played with Buster, you did not want to be wild out there. You wanted to throw strike 1. You wanted to get in and out. He expected that of us. It’s the same thing now that he’s running the whole thing. The direction we have leading the group is perfect.”

The alignment isn’t felt just in the clubhouse. Posey’s lieutenants Minasian and Winn share his philosophies daily with their major-league and minor-league staffs, respectively, as they stress building a new culture, restoring pride in wearing a Giants uniform, and bringing success back to the organization.

In separate interviews, Minasian and Winn were very much on the same page — which is Posey’s page. As Barry Bonds, one of many Giants alumni Posey brought to camp during spring training, told The Standard, “It’s a little different than before with all of us around. It resonates with the players right now because we’re all speaking the same language. … It’s not some computer board telling them what to do anymore.”

Minasian, 41, has a scouting background, having served as Zaidi’s director of pro scouting and then VP of pro scouting — he’s a godson of Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda but claims he’d like nothing better than to beat L.A. Winn is a former outfielder who spent 13 years in the majors, five as a Giant, and returned to the organization after retiring as a player to assume many roles; he now oversees the farm system.

“We have to pitch well, and that’s where it starts,” Minasian said. “At our ballpark, there aren’t as many three-run homers as other places. Pat Burrell has talked about it a lot. Buster has talked about it a lot. Picking those spots when we do have to manufacture runs, focus on getting runners over, it’s a brand of baseball we may see a little bit more now than what we’ve seen in the past.”

Winn, who spent much of spring training at the Papago Park facility with senior director of player development Kyle Haines and more than 150 Giants prospects, said minor-league instructors have drilled home the same messages as those stressed to big-leaguers.

“We talk about it every day, talk about it ad nauseam, small groups, large groups, classroom settings,” Winn said. “First-pitch strikes. Situational hitting, putting the ball in play, not striking out, being a tough out. Having all these players understand what Buster expects, what Bob Melvin expects, is part of my job.”

Winn, 50, is as Bay Area as it gets, a graduate of San Ramon Valley High School and Santa Clara University, where he played baseball and basketball, a teammate of Steve Nash. He knows his Giants history, growing up with the ’80s and ’90s teams, calling the 1989 Giants-A’s World Series “my sweet spot as a kid for watching baseball.”

Winn believes that Posey has what it takes to steer the franchise to another era of greatness.

“What Buster was as a player, how he played the game, what it took for him to win, it’s very easy for me to share his messages to these players,” Winn said, “because they’re the same things I believe you need to win ballgames.”

Minasian is on the same wavelength.

“Just like the players who want their teammates to respect them, we have our teammates in the front office,” Minasian said, “and the last thing I want to do is let somebody like Buster down.”