The word was spreading. A few weeks ago, the message was getting communicated, from the clubhouse to all the offices inside Giants HQ, to the rest of the baseball world. It wasn’t loud. But it was unmistakable.
Buster Posey was ready for some action — not just one move, not just middling stuff, but some serious shaking up. And it wasn’t because he was mad about his roster, it was because he didn’t want to waste all the good things that have been happening this season. He didn’t want to be too cautious, like maybe some top Giants people wondered about Farhan Zaidi when it came to the biggest moves. Posey didn’t want to sit and dawdle over his prospects then get left behind when things got done.
Now, in the immediate wake of Sunday’s blockbuster trade — left-hander Kyle Harrison (and others) to Boston for star hitter Rafael Devers — we can look back on Posey’s edginess the last few weeks and we can hear what he was really communicating. It was about right now but also probably about the entire Posey tenure.
He’s used to controlling games as a catcher. He wants to control the deal flow around the Giants, which means jumping into big deals as soon as the best ones are available.
At the time, Posey had just moved on from LaMonte Wade Jr. and added Dominic Smith and Daniel Johnson — which kickstarted a winning streak after a big slump — but that wasn’t going to be the end of it. He didn’t want to fall one hitter short. He knew it’d take the risk of moving a good young arm and that it might come back to haunt him. But he was ready to do it. He was all-in on the risk. For sure he was ready.
Frankly, Harrison probably was the most likely trade asset all along — valuable enough to draw other teams’ attention but clearly passed in the Giants’ young pitching hierarchy by Hayden Birdsong and probably also Carson Whisenhunt, who is still in Triple-A. So Posey made his call on Harrison. No turning back now.
When I talked to Posey last weekend about his trade philosophy and whether the Giants were wary of trading a good young pitcher after then-general manager Brian Sabean lived through trading Zack Wheeler for Carlos Beltran in 2011 — and years of second-guessing while Wheeler became one of the game’s best pitchers — Posey couldn’t have been clearer. In his own, subtle way, Posey was practically bursting with kinetic trade energy.
“I love the Wheeler trade,” Posey said back then. “I mean, I just think it was such a bold move by Sabes, bringing in Carlos Beltrán, 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.’”
It’s an easy update from that conversation to Sunday. The Devers acquisition means that Posey believes in his players, who’ve kept in close contact with the Dodgers through almost half the season now. It shows that he understands what Devers’ bat can do for them now and for many more years. And that he was willing to not only sacrifice Harrison to do it but also pick up the remaining eight-plus years of the 10-year, $313.5-million deal Devers signed before last season.
That comes after Posey signed Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182-million deal last offseason. So the Giants are committed to paying Devers and Adames a combined $59 million through the 2031 season … and then, after Adames’ deal expires before the 2032 season, Devers will still be owed $28.5 million each in 2032 and 2033. If you include the deal with Matt Chapman that Posey helped to get done at the tail end of last season (and was the first sign that Posey not only was going to take over baseball operations but that he wasn’t going to do it meekly), it’s $82.2 million combined to those three players through 2030, when Chapman’s deal expires.
You can always trade anybody, as Boston just proved. But this is a fairly large pot-commitment to these three guys. You’ve got to imagine that, at least for a little while, the Giants are done chasing after (and missing on) the biggest free agents. And I think Posey probably wasn’t in love with that concept, anyway — he essentially sat out the Juan Soto chase last offseason, for instance.
There’s a theme here, too: Devers is 28, Adames 29, and Chapman 32. They’re very accomplished players who should be right in the middle of their primes. They’re good right now (though we’ll see if Adames fully breaks out of his slump and if Devers takes time to adjust to the Giants), but they’re not rentals and not on their last legs.
Where will Bob Melvin put Devers? As a full-time designated hitter, the role Devers grudgingly accepted in Boston after the Red Sox signed third baseman Alex Bregman? At first base, which Devers declined to play after the spot opened up earlier this season? At third, at least while Chapman’s hand heals? Mostly, I think Posey is trusting Melvin to figure that one out and it’s likely that Devers could see time in all those spots.
But I think Wilmer Flores will get fewer at-bats. I think Jerar Encarnación will mostly disappear. I think the Giants’ lineup is much more dynamic with Devers fitting in somewhere in the middle of Jung Hoo Lee, Adames, Smith, Mike Yastrzemski, and Chapman when he returns. And if it’s not working by the time the July 31 trade deadline rolls around, Posey won’t wait around to do something else. Or the next time or the time after that. Over the last few weeks, he’s been telling us who he is as a lead executive. Time to believe him.