Kawakami: Buster Posey’s ticking clock doomed Bob Melvin

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Buster Posey could’ve gotten almost any kind of commitment for almost anything he wanted from his Giants ownership partners a year ago, when he took over as president of baseball operations and chief of all he surveyed.

An infinity-year contract? Yours if you want it, Buster. Just come save the franchise.

But what he signed was a three-year deal. Decidedly short term. No extended guarantees for either side. Not even a blink of time in the history of this proud franchise.

And now, the deal is 33% completed, and Posey has to hire another manager after firing Bob Melvin on Monday
— just a few months after he picked up Melvin’s option for 2026.

It feels a little rushed, all this hiring and firing and reconsidering and hiring again. It all feels tremendously urgent, like every loss is an affront to the process.

Which brings me back to Posey’s three-year deal, and a team president who is clearly not in the mood to bide his time on anything.

He set this all up, now we know, out of competitive impatience. There’s a ticking clock on this experience, because that’s the way he wants it.

“When seasons don’t go the way y0u want them, it’s never one person’s fault; it’s never one group’s fault,” Posey said on his Zoom call with reporters Monday.

“But when they don’t go the way you want them, in my opinion, you can’t sit there and say you’re going to do the same thing we did this year for the next year.”

I’m not saying that Posey and the other Giants owners designed this for him to be counting down the days to a 2027 exit. I’m saying he figured he’d know very swiftly whether he could do this or not — and folks, a .500 season won’t prove that affirmatively.

He’s joked to people around the front office that he can always go back to retired life. This next point is from me, not him, but it might as well be him: Posey doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody and will be making a speech in Cooperstown in a few years to prove it.

But those who know Posey understand that the jokes are a bit of a misdirection. He got into this because he’s dying to be the guy who leads the Giants back to the World Series.

And he signed a short-term deal because he doesn’t want to waste any time doing it.

Maybe some of this is unfair to Melvin, who is a solid manager and worked to grind through every detail this season. Maybe staying with him through 2026 would’ve resulted in a terrific run under Melvin’s guidance.

But Posey lost faith in him, and that could not be recovered. And I don’t think the next manager will be much forgiven for 81-81 seasons, either.

Let’s go back to why Posey took this job in the first place: He was hanging around with team chairman Greg Johnson and not liking what he saw from the 2024 Giants. Posey could’ve just stayed retired, remained on the sidelines as a minority investor in the team, and offered his thoughts here or there.

But no. Posey felt compelled to do something. He wasn’t going to stand aside and let this keep going. He wanted it to change immediately.

Could this lead the Giants to some frenetic decisions? Yes. Is urgency alone the best solution for a farm system that isn’t producing stars and an offense that went dead for several weeks this year? No.

And Posey isn’t doing only rash things, of course. There are bigger-picture plans, and he knows he has to restock the farm system over a series of years. But he wasn’t going to sit back and accept a .500 season as any kind of positive shift. Something needed a jump start.

This is not a five-year plan, in other words. It’s an every-year, every-month, every-day plan. Posey wants to win now and will get rid of anybody he decides is getting in the way — even if it feels a little rash, and even if it costs the Giants some money to do it.

I believe Posey kept Melvin to start this season because he thought the Giants needed some stability from the end of the Farhan Zaidi era. Posey said Monday that he picked up the option in July because the team was winning, and he thought the public act of committing to Melvin would boost the club (which clearly didn’t work).

Along the way, Posey took on a massive financial commitment when he traded for Rafael Devers in June and, before that, when he signed Willy Adames last offseason.

These were not the moves of a cautious plodder. This was not how a president with an endless reserve of patience approaches team building.

And a few months ago, when Posey and general manager Zack Minasian began refusing to address Melvin’s future, that was a sign that things were very unstable under Melvin’s feet. I thought the Giants’ late-August/early-September surge — after Posey traded away key bullpen arms and after several young Giants starters flamed out — would be enough to keep Melvin employed into 2026. I was wrong.

The sloppy play, the lack of energy at home through the slump, and the probability that Posey has some prime replacement candidates in mind all combined to doom Melvin.

Also, I suspect Posey didn’t want Melvin to go into next season as a lame duck; and Posey absolutely wasn’t going to give him another year just to alleviate that kind of pressure. If Posey was thinking of moving on from Melvin after the 2026 season, why not just do it a year earlier to speed things up?

“We have high standards,” Posey said. “We’ve gotta get back to a place where we’re getting into the playoffs, we’re making runs in playoffs. That’s what the fan base deserves, what the city deserves.”

What does this mean for Posey and Minasian’s manager search? I think Bruce Bochy, if he’s let go by the Rangers, will be considered, but I’m not sure that’s where Posey is likely to turn.

I do think that Posey will hire someone who reminds him of Bochy from 2010, when the Giants were lined up for a mini-dynasty and the manager had it all under control. Whether that’s Craig Albernaz, Mark Hallberg, Nick Hundley, or whoever else, I don’t know.

Posey will keep this close to the vest. He will not flinch from a big decision. And even if there’s every understanding that he can run this team for however long he wants, Posey will impose his own personal urgency on this hire and on every move after that. Because he can hear the clock ticking. There’s zero time to waste.