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Every Giants fan knows that the Zach Wheeler-for-Carlos Beltran trade is a cautionary tale, right? Brian Sabean’s July 2011 blockbuster move took a lot of guts, didn’t boost the Giants that year, and looked riskier and worse once Beltran departed as a free agent and Wheeler started to pile up quality seasons.
Buster Posey, though, isn’t looking at the Wheeler trade as past proof of what the Giants must not ever do again. Maybe something closer to the opposite of that. Which seems pretty significant as he heads into his first trade deadline period as the Giants’ president of baseball operations.
“I love the Wheeler trade,” Posey told me before Saturday’s game when I asked him if there’s any chilling effect from that deal 14 years later. “I mean, I just think it was such a bold move by Sabes, bringing in Carlos Beltran, one of the great hitters in the game. And it was just a signal to the group that he felt like we were in a position to go out and win again. I don’t look at that as a negative. Because again, it was the leader of our operation saying, ‘Believe in you guys.'”
Back then, the Giants were coming off of their breakthrough 2010 championship, with most of their main guys just starting their primes and all of their pitching power very much at full force. But Posey was lost for the season after a May crash at the plate and the Giants were desperate for more hitting. Beltran was available. Wheeler was a top prospect but wasn’t immediately necessary with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, and others locking down opponents almost every night.
Trading Wheeler for Beltran was a gutsy, go-for-it move. It didn’t work out, but it wasn’t stupid or silly. And Posey doesn’t mind noting all of that right now.
And hey, does it sound just a little bit like what’s happening with the Giants right now? Yes, it does. The Giants have Logan Webb and Robbie Ray as Cy Young candidates at the top of the rotation and four or five other solid starting options. They’ve got the best bullpen in baseball so far. They have multiple good young arms in the minors. They’ve gotten just enough offense to win five consecutive games, all by one run, but putting this kind of constant pressure on the pitching staff probably isn’t sustainable.
If there’s a time to risk moving a young and talented pitcher for a solid, middle-of-the-order hitter, maybe it’s between now and the July 31 trade deadline.
“You know, Wheeler is one of the best pitchers in the game — it would be nice if we had a crystal ball and could say that (back in July 2011) — but you don’t know.,” Posey said. “Nobody knows. Anybody that says they know … it’s always easy to look back on these things years down the road and then over-analyze them.”
More context: Wheeler didn’t develop into a top starting pitcher until 2018, when he was in his early 30s, after missing the entire 2015 season with an elbow injury. He’s had his greatest seasons from 2021 on, after he signed with the Phillies as a free agent.
Also, the Giants weren’t exactly devastated by the 2011 failure and Beltran exit — they won the World Series in 2012 (with Posey winning NL MVP) and won the World Series again in 2014. None of this, of course, means that Posey absolutely will trade from the Giants’ pitching surplus to add a hitter. That deal might never come available. But the important part is that Posey’s Giants administration will be waiting for it — or probably even looking for it.
The connection from the early 2010s, when they were winning titles, to now is not hard to see: If the Giants get timely hitting, they probably have more than enough pitching to be competitive in any short series against anybody.
“I think it starts with Buster, right?” Webb said of the team’s pitching mindset. “He came in the first day — and Buster was part of a lot of really good teams here and I think the best thing they did was pitch. We came in, he just wanted us to know, like, this is how we do things, this is how we pitch. We attack guys. We don’t walk people. Just staying on the attack is the most important thing.”
Justin Verlander was Posey’s lone big pitching addition last offseason, and he turned in 10 middling starts before heading to the IL (and he’s due back soon). It’s not like Posey tore up and remade the staff. But if this season is about figuring out how Posey’s presence and mindset are being absorbed in the clubhouse and translated to the field, you can feel it most of all in the consistency and competitiveness of the Giants’ pitching, currently sitting with the second-best team ERA in the majors.
“It feels to me right now, what I’m seeing is, and it’s really exciting, is you see Logan Webb go out throw six, seven, eight innings,” Posey said. “The next man up wants to do the same thing. So it’s a healthy competition that the starters have going.
“Then you look at our pen and outside of Tyler Rogers, it’s a fairly young group. So they’ve done a nice job. Randy Rodriguez really stands out as a guy we’ve been able to bring in in some really high-pressure situations. And he’s been able to get us out of some big jams. And his confidence continues to grow and grow. (Camilo) Doval’s been great. Rog is who Rog is. It’s been a great effort from those guys.”
The Giants are now 38-28, tied with the Padres in second place in the NL West, both only one game behind the Dodgers and tied for the top two NL wild-card spots. The Giants have actually scored 12 more runs than San Diego, but they’ve put up 94 fewer than Los Angeles and at least 20 fewer than all four of the teams (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati) grouped behind them in the NL wild-card race.
And within all this, we’re beginning to see Posey’s point-man personality bubble to the surface. He is never going to be a shouter or a look-at-me leader, but Posey isn’t denying that he was communicating something larger by moving on from LaMonte Wade Jr. (traded to the Angels on Sunday after he was designated for assignment), and adding Dominic Smith, Daniel Johnson, and Andrew Knizner on Wednesday — after watching the offense sputter through a 9-14 tailspin.
“I think the message … from us as a group is that it was time to shake it up,” Posey sad. “We’re pitching and we’re defense, but the last two and a half to three weeks of offense, we know we’re better than that. And the guys need to understand that there’s a standard and expectation and we’ve gotta do better. And they’ve answered nicely the last few games.”
The clubhouse got the memo. Loud, clear, and with exclamation points.
“I think his quote kind of said it all, he said, ‘It’s go time,'” Webb said. “Yeah, we kind of feel that. Buster has a presence to him. You feel it every time he’s in this clubhouse. When Buster says it’s go time, it’s go time.”
Posey isn’t a dawdler. He wasn’t going to sit around and watch this season’s good start get wrecked by offensive inertia. He made some moves. There will be more, almost certainly. It sure doesn’t sound like he’s going to be risk-averse with his pitching surplus as the deadline approaches, but he’s not going to be reckless, either.
“Look, I believe that pitching, especially young pitching … I’ve seen it, I experienced it as a player … is a foundation of success,” Posey said. “So yeah, yeah, it’s something that I think you have to take very seriously and certainly not be flippant about the value that young pitching has for organizational health.”
But a team can’t be paralyzed by risk if it might be able to swing a deal for a player it really, really needs.
“I think it’s all part of the conversation,” Posey said. “Ultimately, I think, to get a deal done, it’s like any type of deal you do. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying a house or car, at some point you’re gonna be probably a little bit uncomfortable with it to get it across the finish line.”
We’re still learning about Posey as a team president. He’s probably learning about himself in this position, too. But he’s also starting to show and tell us what this era will be like, and it almost certainly will not be timid.